Excerpt from The Perfect Girl by Gilly Macmillan, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Then we're off, in perfect synchrony.

We dazzle when we do this; everybody says so. The energy two players produce can be electrifying when it's right. It's a tightrope act controlling the power, the tone, and the dynamics, because all of it must be perfectly balanced, and it wasn't so good this afternoon when we got tired and cross with each other while practicing in the heat, but tonight, it's brilliant. It's seamless, beautiful, and we're right in the music, both of us, and I'll admit that doesn't always happen. Mostly doesn't happen.

In fact, I'm so into it that at first I don't hear the shouting, and not hearing the shouting means that I don't realize that what's just begun is the end.

But I wish I had realized.

Why do I wish that?

Because, six hours later, my mother is dead.

From The Perfect Girlby Gilly Macmillan. Copyright © 2016 by Gilly Macmillan. Reprinted by permission of William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers