She was gone.
He couldn't believe it, though he knew it to be true. He had been thinking that one thought, "she is gone", for the past nine hours. He checked his watch again, the movement of his reflection in the cramped washroom startled him. He sighed, and the mirror-man sighed with him, eerily reminding him of his long dead grandfather. His snowy hair had long ago given up any style and arranged itself in a halo of curls that any other man past fifty would kill for. Travelling from his rebellious hair, he slowly met the mirror-man's eyes, and stared. They were not the brilliant steel he knew, but a dead, flat blue-
-her favorite blue. The blue of the scarf he bought for her last birthday.
No.
He looked anywhere but the mirror.
A knock at the door made him jump.
Slowly, the man removed himself from in front of the mirror and relinquished the washroom. He bobbed through the chairs and instruments and members of the symphony orchestra. Most of the people avoided his eyes. They all knew she was gone.
There, another shot to the stomach. They all knew.
He mindlessly wandered past the back rows, until his arm was grasped tightly. He looked down into the emerald green eyes of his daughter. She put her horn case down and put more pressure on his arm, just above his elbow. She looked his face up and down, and her eyes told him that she could see right through him, just as she always could.
"I'm fine, Melody. Warm up," he said to her, attempting a smile. His face faltered in the middle of the motion, but the effort had been made, and he saw that it pleased her.
"We'll have dinner after the performance. Don't think you'll get out of it," she smiled at him and kissed him on his cheek. He patted her on the hand, the hand that was letting go of his arm, and he continued to move to his place.
His chair was on the extreme stage right, behind the curtain so that even when they were drawn, the audience could not see him. He looked at the section directly in front of him. The cellos.
She should be there, smiling at him, chiding him for moving his chair too close to her section and causing mischief. She should be turning to the horn section and sharing smiles with Melody. She should be there.
She was not there. She was gone.
He checked his watch. Her plane would be landing any time now. She would be back in her homeland, so many miles away. A lifetime away.
His eye caught the motion of the concert mistress' movement. She was playing the tuning A already. She was looking at him expectantly.
Slowly, he made his way to the front of the symphony orchestra. The applause was deafening, as always. He bowed to the patrons, and turned to his scores.
He opened the one labeled "Scheherazade – I" in her handwriting.
He lifted the baton she had given him.
Habit made him look to the cellos, though all of the strings were at the ready. Her chair was empty.
She was gone.