Chapter 1: The Note Left Over

The note had a small burr inside it, like a thread caught beneath a fingernail. Ada Mercer held the key down until the sound thinned into the room. Behind her, something clicked against a saucer. She could hear that perfectly.

“Again?” Eli Finch asked.

She lifted her finger. He stood beside the open upright with her tool bag between his shoes, his coat still zipped to his chin. Melted snow had darkened the knees of his trousers where he had rested the bag at the bus stop. She pointed toward the dining chair.

“Your coat. You’ll take the warmth outside with you.”

He pulled it off and laid it over the chair. At sixteen he had not yet learned to put clothing down without one sleeve trailing on the floor. She waited until he had turned back before striking the note again.

“There,” he said.

She watched his mouth. “There what?”

“That wobble. Same as before.”

The front window admitted a flat winter light. Across the street, a delivery driver carried a carton against his chest, feeling for the path with one foot. Ada Mercer moved the tuning lever a little farther onto its pin.

“Listen to what it’s doing now. Not what you remember.”

He nodded, accepting the correction so readily that she wished she had phrased it differently.

From the kitchen came the scrape of a drawer. Nora Bell said something, and the end of it reached the piano as a question.

“We’re all right,” Ada Mercer called.

Their hostess appeared in the doorway holding two teaspoons.

“I asked whether you take sugar. I couldn’t remember about him.”

“I don’t,” the boy said.

“He’ll eat anything sweet, though,” Ada Mercer said. “Don’t let him persuade you otherwise.”

He smiled. The moment passed into the kitchen with the spoons.

On the piano stood a school photograph, a pottery bowl containing buttons, and a folded grocery receipt. Ada Mercer had moved them onto the dining table before opening the instrument. She remembered when there had been room for flowers up there. Lately the household put down whatever its hands needed to relinquish.

Her own table at home held a lamp, her appointment book, and a place mat she wiped after meals without moving it.

She adjusted the felt mute and sounded the strings separately. This part still belonged to her hands: the fit of a tool, the resistance before movement, the refusal to hurry simply because someone was waiting. The boy could hear a difference. He could not make the adjustment for her.

“Stand here,” she said.

He came around to her left.

“Not so close. Your sleeve.”