Free Revived Spirits by Julia Watts

detaching McGinty’s claws from her sweater and placing him on his perch. He lowered his head and stared at Liv as the family pulled out chairs and seated themselves.
    Mrs.Havard’s hot,sweet tea was delicious,and the sandwiches, fruit and cookies made Liv realize how hungry she was. Everyone tucked in, and Liv strained to hear her mother and their hostess over the banging of the piano.
    Before anyone was ready for second helpings, the battering noises stopped, and the kitchen door swung open. A slender girl with stringy blond hair tramped in. Her watery green eyes, framed by pale lashes, might have been pretty if not for the frown lines between them. “I’m Frederica,” she announced, scraping a chair away from the table, and thumping into it. Her mother handed her a plate and pointed to the tray of sandwiches and cakes.
    “Well, my dear,” she said to Liv, pouring a cup of tea for Frederica and topping off the other cups, “tell me what music you like to play.”
    Liv politely began listing the pieces she’d be practicing on their piano. “Mozart—I’ve just begun a sonata. And I’m working on a new Bach Invention.”   Mrs. Havard’s enthusiastic nods and smiles encouraged her to go on. “There’s something about the way the melodies twine around each other—”
    She stopped when Baxter leaped into her lap and began licking her face. “I hope you like Bach, too, Baxter!” She laughed and hugged him. “You’re going to hear a lot of it.”
    Frederica shot Liv a sour look. “Baxter dislikes counterpoint. He particularly hates Bach.” She drank down the last of her tea and brushed crumbs from the white gauze top whose long sleeves were barely paler than her hands. Without a word, she stood and left the room.
    “Yeah,” whispered Anthony into her ear. “That’s because he used to be a Scottie until Princess Pound-a-Lot started playing the piano, and his hair turned white.”
    Frederica punched out a few more passages with alarming gusto, while the piano and everyone’s ears took a beating. Liv felt sorry for Baxter, hunkered under the kitchen table. She could guess why tea had been served here instead of in the dining room— more space between the guests and the noise. Even cheerful Mrs. Havard winced a little now and then. Her shoulders had visibly relaxed when Frederica stopped.
    Now the strains of a Chopin Nocturne began to drift through the open transom above the door separating the kitchen from the dining and reception rooms. It was slow, as if she might be just learning it, and her playing was weak. Baxter tolerated it nervously. He settled into an uneasy sleep under the parrot perch, twitching an eyebrow. Liv made a mental note: Ask Mom to pick up doggie treats at Sainsbury’s.
    As if anxious to steer the subject away from pianos, Mrs. Wescott commented on the stringed instruments they’d seen in the reception room: a small violin in its open case and a half-sized cello on a display stand. Did Frederica play any of those?
    “Oh, mercy, no!” Mrs. Havard caught herself. “I mean, not anymore—that is, she used to.” She blushed and looked at her husband, who’d wandered into the kitchen to stack a plate with sandwiches.
    Mr. Havard, a tall man casually dressed in khaki shorts and a polo shirt, grinned. “Well, come on, one might as well say it—I mean it’s no crime to be tone deaf. It’s just a crime to deny it.” A wrong note on the piano was followed by the bang of a fist on the keys and some rude words. McGinty cocked his head at the sound of Frederica’s voice and flew over the door through the transom.
    Mrs. Havard said, “We started Frederica out on violin when she was very small, but couldn’t stand the out-of-tune problem. We switched her to cello, hoping she’d improve while playing something not quite so high-pitched.” Poor Frederica. It didn’t sound like much of a cure to Liv, just a way to feel like a failure twice.
    Mr. Havard said, “It didn’t work, but