Time Is The Key To Everything

Chapter 23: The Times He Played For Her

A/N: So uhhh.... we advance 5 years later since the last encounter of James and Cass.

BTW, Paul's a handicap here since the war he had with James. You know, the bombs and explosions which caused his legs to be uhhh.... just read, dammit..

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"May I ask you a question?" Cassidy asked during their second meeting. True to her word, she had come back. James and Gelo had been surprised and suspicious in the way only they—so like the brothers she never had—could be when she told them of her intentions. They had not tried to stop her. They would not have been able to. Instead they let her go, promises of a late dinner said quickly over her should her as she ran down the crooked stairs.

Excitement had turned to anxiety as she had entered the dance hall. When she had arrived it had been closed for the evening, the last bits of colored paper fluttering out the door as she closed it behind her to join the snowflakes that had determined that now was the time to fall. The time when mothers put restless children to bed and war widows wept in overstuffed chairs by the fireplace.

With shaking hands, Cassidy had unwrapped her scarf, her reddened fingertips clutching the comforting material as she had tried to decide what to do with it. There was no one to take her hat, take her coat, or the hand knit scarf so she had draped it over a chair and laid her coat and hat on top of it.

The doors to the main hall had been closed, the polished handles cold and forbidding beneath her grasp. With a deep breath, she had swung them open, the fear and doubt evaporating as her eyes had immediately focused on the grand piano that once again graced the middle of the room and Paul sitting—waiting for her—behind it.

When their eyes had met she had seen the relief in his eyes and had known that he had been afraid too.

"I believe you just have." Paul answered as he sorted though the sheets of music in his hand.

Confused, Cassidy only stared until she saw the faintest flicker of a smile.

"That's mean!" She grinned despite herself. "Well then, may I ask you three questions?"

Paul raised an eyebrow. "Three?"

"Those were two questions and the next one, the actual one, is the third."

"I see. That's very clever of you. Yes, you may ask your third question."

The smile slid off Cassidy's face and the atmosphere became so somber that Paul knew what she was going to ask but was still somewhat surprised when she did.

"How did you get to be in that wheelchair?"

If it had been anyone else, Paul would have told them to leave at once, but not this girl who he barely knew. When she had approached him the night before and told him that she understood the song, he had been shocked and suspicious.

When she had promised to come back, he had barely allowed himself to hope. But now she sat next to him, looking at him with eyes filled with something that was so similar to that which was in his heart and he suddenly knew that there was nothing that he could ever deny her.

"How do you know I was not born like this?"

Cassidy's brows furrowed as she sought to put her thoughts into words. "I'm not really sure. It's mostly just a feeling. And you carry yourself like someone who has known what it is like to walk."

"That's a…unique manner of reaching conclusions."

"Am I right?"

Paul sighed softly. "Yes. Yes you are."