chapter 1
Charlotte Donovan was cursed.
She'd been trying to ignore the signs all day long, but now, three weeks before Christmas, she found herself stuck in a vintage cage elevator between floors four and five having a panic attack, and denial was no longer an option.
Granted, she'd known the truth since she was a kid-December was the month the universe conspired against Charlotte and rained down an amalgam of mishaps, everything from a mundane red wine spill on a white blouse to the disaster five years ago she wouldn't even let herself think about anymore.
Except here she was, clawing at the latticed elevator door of Elle's Upper West Side building, thinking about it.
"We'll get you out of there, sweetie. Just stay calm."
This was from Sloane, her colleague at the Manhattan School of Music and cofounder of the Rosalind Quartet, which they'd started together two years ago. Charlotte couldn't see her-well, she could see Sloane's booted feet standing on the fifth floor, cuffed jeans just above her ankles-but her friend gave off a decidedly relaxed air that made Charlotte want to scream.
"Easy for you to say," Charlotte said, bouncing a little in hopes the elevator would take the hint and do its goddamn job.
"I don't understand it," Elle said from next to Sloane. Charlotte could also only see their feet, which were covered in socks featuring tiny cellos and Christmas trees.
How wonderfully festive.
Charlotte's lip curled as she turned her gaze away, looking up at the elevator's ceiling as if it held a clue to escaping this hell.
"This has never happened before," Elle said.
"Of course it hasn't," Charlotte said through her teeth.
"What do you mean by that?" Sloane asked.
Charlotte exhaled, closed her eyes, tried to breathe through her frantically pounding heart. For all intents and purposes, Sloane was her best friend, though Charlotte never thought about her in those terms exactly. Sloane was definitely a friend. A good friend. They drank nice wine together. Arranged music for their ensemble, for their students. They'd even cowritten a few original pieces that had ended up on the quartet's debut album, Evergreen, just released this past October. Charlotte also knew that Sloane's parents had divorced amicably, and she had an older sister who lived in Nashville, who, according to Sloane, was the butch lesbian complement to Sloane's femme bisexual style.
Best friends, though?
Charlotte balked at the term, even though she was pretty sure it was the one Sloane would use. Still, best came with expectations, a ride-or-die sort of commitment, and Charlotte hadn't felt that for anyone in a long time.
Five years to be exact.
Not that she missed that kind of closeness. If anything, its absence was a relief, which was probably why Sloane knew nothing about Charlotte's December curse. Last Christmas was their first in each other's lives, and Charlotte had managed to avoid any and all disasters in Sloane's presence. Clearly, this year, the universe was upping its game.
"Holy shit, that's why the elevator isn't working?"
This London accent belonged to Manish Sahni, the fourth member of their quartet-he played viola-who had obviously just arrived on the fifth floor safe and sound via the marble staircase Charlotte had been too tired to take.
Oh, December, you fickle little bitch.
"It's fine, Manish," Sloane said in that tone she used when she was trying to keep Charlotte calm during rehearsals. Charlotte hated that tone, like she had to be managed. She was the manager, not the managee, goddammit.
The elevator's walls seemed to close in on her then, as if to say, Oh really? Charlotte hugged her violin case to her chest and whimpered.
"Sweetie, it's okay," Sloane said softly, which only made Charlotte's panic rise like lava inside a brewing volcano. She hadn't meant for that whimper to be audible, but in her defense, she'd been stuck in this cage for a good fifteen minutes, and she was about to lose her shit.
Maybe she should give in, let December win, because it was only the seventh, and the jammed elevator was already the third mishap of the day.
The first misfortune was easy to chalk up to coincidence. It was New York City in December, after all, so when Charlotte had stepped off the curb at the crowded street corner by her apartment early this morning and been promptly jostled so vigorously she'd ended up ankle-deep in a slushy puddle, her tea upturned and mixing with the snow and ice, she'd tried to shake it off. Sure, her brand-new leather boots didn't appreciate the dip, but maybe that was just what she got for wearing them the day after the season's first snowfall, light as it had been.
The second calamity happened hours later, while she was grading finals for her Arranging for Strings class in her office at the Manhattan School of Music. It was the last day of the semester before break, and grades were due by four o'clock that afternoon. Her vision had started to blur, and she realized she hadn't yet had a single drop of caffeine. She got up, calm as could be, exited her office for the small faculty kitchenette down the hall, turned the corner, and was very soon wearing what seemed to be a giant smear of jam all over her black cashmere turtleneck.
"Oh my god, Ms. Donovan, I'm so sorry." Tansy, the String Department's secretary, who changed her hair color weekly and always looked at Charlotte as though Charlotte might unhinge her jaw and devour her at any second, stood there red-faced and purple-haired. "I'm so, so sorry."
"It's fine," Charlotte said tightly, the right thing to say, her arms held out to avoid spreading the mess.
Tansy looked like she might cry, and Charlotte fought a long-suffering sigh. Instead, she forced a smile and chose to focus on the pleasant aroma of what smelled like raspberry-pepper jam currently mottling her sweater.
The secretary handed Charlotte her napkin, then retrieved her toasted bagel from the floor, and that was that. It was just a sweater, and Charlotte moved on with her day. She changed into a spare black blouse she kept in her office and surged forward, marked finals, went over her arrangements for the quartet's rehearsal that evening. A normal Thursday if ever there was one.
At least that's what she told herself.
At five o'clock, she turned off her computer, packed up her violin, put on her black peacoat, and tugged a black knit hat over her long salt-and-pepper hair. She headed out into the cold evening, the Upper West Side already bustling with holiday energy-lights framed shop windows, garland curled around lampposts, and there was a group of young carolers just outside Sakura Park-all of which she tried to ignore. She walked with her head down, her violin tucked like a treasure under her arm. She watched her feet, making sure she avoided anything that could potentially trip her, cover her in something sticky, or damage her person in any way.
When she made it to Elle's building on Central Park West, she smiled to herself as she rang the bell, a silly kind of triumph swelling in her chest.
"Come on up!" Elle's voice trilled from the box.
Elle lived alone on the top floor of a historic Upper West Side building called the Elora. Their grandmother, Mimi, the only family member Elle still had a relationship with and who was an actual actress in LA during the latter years of the Golden Age of Hollywood, had owned the large, sparsely furnished apartment since the 1960s but lived in LA full-time, as she hated the cold eastern winters in New York. In her absence, Elle was more than happy to take care of the apartment, a corner of which made the perfect rehearsal space for the Rosalind Quartet.
A buzzer sounded, and Charlotte stepped into the marble-floored foyer, a vast space that sported an ornate chandelier, a set of marble stairs, and one of those vintage cage elevators with a gate you had to pull shut yourself.
It was beautiful and glamorous, and Charlotte always felt like she was stepping into another era when she was inside. And now here she was, trapped-not in some glitzy age of stardom but in purgatory.
"Okay, my super is calling the fire department," Elle said now.
"Seriously?" Sloane said. "He can't fix it?"
"I don't think he's all that handy."
"He's the super."
"Not so super at fixing shit, apparently," Manish said.
Their feet shifted around at Charlotte's eye level, but she tuned them out. She was going to be here forever. She lived here now. Just send down some bread and water and she'd make it through somehow. Christmas in the Elora's elevator-not all that much worse than her actual plans, which consisted of DoorDash and triple-checking the itinerary for the quartet's European tour their manager, Mirian, had just sent over that morning. One whole month starting in London on December 29, complete with guest lecturer events at the Royal College of Music and the Conservatoire de Paris. It was everything Charlotte had been working toward her entire life-international reach for her edgy interpretations of classics, her original compositions, a chance to prove that Charlotte Donovan was a force in the music world, that everything she'd given up had been worth it.
Everyone she'd given up.
A flash of white in her mind.
White everywhere-an intimate space with white twinkle lights lining every crease and curve, white flowers garnished with red winter berries, the crispness of her white suit as she waited . . . and waited . . . and waited . . .
Fuck. She pressed her fingers to her temples before yelling, "Get me the hell out of here!" Desperation clung to her voice, and she hated it, but she couldn't change it either. She pressed her back against the far wall, closed her eyes, and waited . . . and waited . . . and waited . . .
Two hours later, Charlotte spilled out of the elevator and into Sloane’s arms. She tried to hold it together. She really did, but she clung to her friend like a kid, pushed to the absolute brink with zero ways to manage herself.
Still, she didn't cry. She wasn't a crier. Hadn't even cried when she'd been left at the altar five years ago. Not right away, at least, and certainly not in front of anyone. No, that lovely response waited until two days later, when the manager at the hotel in Paris had called to see why she and her wife had not yet checked in to their honeymoon suite. Even then, she hadn't let the tears spill over, but had squeezed them back where they belonged. In the years since, she'd learned coping mechanisms for when her moods went dark or stress tugged her edges a bit too taut. But December was always a tricky month to navigate, and the elevator . . . well, it was hard to hold everything in check when stuck in a four-by-four square of wood and metal.
"Sweetie, it's okay," Sloane said, freezing for a second but then pulling Charlotte close. "It's over. You're out." She held Charlotte tightly, and Charlotte allowed herself to be comforted.
Just for a second.
Finally, she pulled back, rolled her shoulders straight, and took a breath. "I'm fine. It was fine."
"Fine?" Manish said, holding a glass of red wine, his black hair messy, as though he'd run his hands through it over and over. "I nearly had a nervous breakdown."
Elle patted him on the shoulder, their short, pale-pink locks swooping over one eye. "Yeah, Manny, real tough for you, buddy, what with the couch you sat on for the last ninety minutes and the whole bottle of wine you went through."
Manish sent a brown hand through his hair again, then took another sip. "Half, at most."
"Bottle of wine?" Charlotte said, her limbs still trembling a little. "Manish, we have rehearsal."
"I said half!"
Sloane ignored him and folded her light-brown arms. "Honey, I think we can skip that for tonight."
"What?" Charlotte said. "Absolutely not."
"Char," said Elle, who loved to shorten everyone's name, whether they liked it or not, "how about a glass of wine?"
"If Manish left you any," Sloane said. Manish flipped her off.
"I don't drink when we're playing," Charlotte said tightly. She was out of the elevator, but the panic remained, this feeling that she was slipping, losing control. She never let herself get to this state. Usually, she just spent the month of December hibernating in her apartment and trying not to regret turning down the invitations she'd received back in September to join a symphony's holiday concert lineup.
She didn't play Christmas music.
Hardly played in December at all, lest disaster strike. Her violin alone was nearly irreplaceable, and if anything were to ever befall her hands, wrists, or fingers . . . well, needless to say, very little was worth that risk. But this year, with the tour coming up and their album just released, she'd had no choice. The quartet had completed a small New England tour over fall break in October and played a number of smaller venues here in New York, all to packed houses. So far, she'd managed to avoid major performances in December, but that didn't negate the need to rehearse.
"I know," Elle said, "but maybe a few sips will take the edge off?"
Charlotte shook her head and brushed past her colleagues toward Elle's apartment. Inside, she went straight for the northwest corner, where four mismatched chairs sat facing one another, a rainbow of color, and promptly set her violin case down on her usual lilac-hued seat.
She opened her case, taking out Rosalind, her violin, so named for Rosalind in Shakespeare's As You Like It. A woman who adapted, who did whatever she had to do to get what she wanted, what she needed. She'd always been Charlotte's favorite Shakespearean heroine, thus the inspiration for her violin's name. She'd had this violin for seven years, since before, and it had seen her through some very low and dark times, her one constant. When she and Sloane met two years ago and started throwing ideas around for a quartet, Rosalind seemed like the perfect name for an all-queer group that took classic string pieces and twisted them just so, creating something new and powerful, something unexpected.
Now she breathed easier just setting her hands on Rosalind's neck, feeling the strings under her fingers. Granted, her fingers still trembled a bit, but that would stop as soon as she started playing.
"Charlotte," Sloane said firmly, coming up next to her and eyeing her shaking hands. "Just sit down for a sec."
Copyright © 2024 by Ashley Herring Blake. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
