That was when Ally realized with a burst of joy that Nina still had an interior life that she was carefully hoarding. What else was going on in that mind? The sense of the night closing in? Do not go gentle. Please. Stay awhile with me.
She got up and went over to the record cabinet. Her mother still had her collection of old 33s, today they were called vinyl, with conductors from decades ago like Bruno Walter and Arturo Toscanini. She found a Janacek String Quartet, No. 2, a rare mono pressing by the old Budapest String Quartet fifty years ago, and put it on the turntable, still loving those first crackling sounds that raise your anticipation. She remembered how Nina would put on a record in the evening, after dinner, with room‑temperature scotch in hand, and make the family sit and listen. She suspected that had a lot to do with her own desire to play the violin herself someday. And then, in high school, she started lessons. Better late than never.
Now, though, she sensed there was something Nina wanted to tell her and this was her way of setting the stage.
After the music had played for almost three minutes, Nina listening with eyes closed as though in a rapture as the movement clawed its way toward an initial theme in an elusive minor mode, she turned and looked at Ally.
"He didn't tell you he came to see me, did he? Seth?"
"I guess he forgot," Ally said. It was a lie neither of them believed.
"I've been thinking over all he was trying to say. I didn't get everything at the time, but I guess my feeble mind was recording it. Now it's all coming back. He was talking about Arthur and his suicide—Ally, we both know that's what it was—and how he felt responsible and how he was finally going to be able to make up for all the harm he'd done to me, and to you. But he was worried you might not want to go along with this special treatment for me." She was studying Ally, as though searching for an answer. Maria had discreetly departed for the kitchen. "He kept talking about this doctor he knew. At this clinic. He swore this man could perform a miracle for me. He said I should do it, whether you approved or not."
Ally looked at her, wondering what to say. This was getting too devious for words.
Then Nina went on. "I'll probably not remember anything about this by tomorrow. But I just wanted to tell you. When you get as mentally addled as I am now, you compensate by developing your other senses, I call it your sixth sense. And Ally, I think he's involved in something that's evil. And he wants to draw me into it, maybe both of us." She stopped carefully framing her words. "I sensed a kind of desperation about him. I don't know exactly what it was."
As Ally listened the Janacek quartet swelling in the room, scratches and all, she felt more and more like an utter dunce. She hadn't caught any of this in Grant's come‑on, but now . . . Nina was right about that sixth sense.