Elegy for Piano and Three Voices

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

When Alzheimer's takes Stacey's mother, Stacey gives up everything—her career, her music—to take care of her. Until one lonely night, when caretaking becomes too much, Stacy sits at the piano and plays Bach.

She hopes to escape into the comfort of classical music. But what she discovers in the music—about her mother, her family, herself—proves far more enlightening than she ever imagined.

"A joy of clarity and lyricism. [Rusch] is a new breed of writer: a Renaissance woman."

—Charles de Lint

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Oct 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536503173

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award. Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award. She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake.  She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own. To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

Book preview

Elegy for Piano and Three Voices

Elegy for Piano and Three Voices

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

WMG Publishing, Inc.

Contents

Elegy for Paino and Three Voices

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About the Author

Also by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Elegy for Paino and Three Voices

Her mother loved music.

Stacey had forgotten this until she sat down at the piano one evening after a particularly bad day, a day in which her mother threw her lunch at the visiting nurse, then burst into tears of frustration and rage.

The piano gathered dust in what had once been the conservatory of her parents’ home, a large room which, in its heyday, had been filled with plants and sunlight, except in the back corner, where the piano sat in the required darkness. In those days, other instruments had their own places of honor—her father’s cello, her brother’s violin, her older sister’s flute, her younger sister’s oboe. Stacey’s instrument was supposed to be the piano, and she played it reluctantly in the beginning and later, when