Chapter 5: Finished

When she reached the troublesome note, she placed the felt between the strings and sounded them separately. The isolated sound was thinner than the whole note. She compared it with another, waited, and made a small adjustment.

The window beside her held a pale reflection of her wrist. Beyond it, the narrow strip of garden was losing its color as the light went. She could see the lever move in the glass more easily than she could feel the movement in her hand.

She removed the mute and put it on the windowsill, apart from the tools she still needed.

Then she struck the key.

The roughness had narrowed. She listened until she was no longer certain whether the movement belonged to the sound or to her expectation of it.

“Tell me what it does after the beginning.”

Eli Finch leaned forward. She played again.

“There’s still a little of it.”

She waited for him to add something, but he did not. There was no apology attached to the report.

She isolated the string again, adjusted it, and drew out the felt. This time she kept her hand away from the lever while the full note sounded.

The boy listened with his chin lowered.

“Again?” he said.

She played it again, then more firmly. The sound rose between them, settled, and diminished. A cupboard closed somewhere beyond the door; she waited and repeated the test.

“I don’t hear it moving anymore,” he said.

She tried it against the neighboring notes, then in a chord. She could hear enough to follow the relation between them. The boy’s answer had given her a place to begin, but she stayed with the work until her own comparisons held.

Her wrist rested against the wood below the keys. She had only to lift it, touch the handle, and make the almost invisible movement that would leave something for another day.

Instead she took the lever off.

She laid it in its cloth and folded the fabric over the metal. The sound was already gone. Nothing in the room announced what she had done.

Eli Finch stood when she reached for the front panel.

“This end?”

“Yes. Keep it level.”

They fitted it into place together. She secured her side and checked his, then played a short passage slowly enough that no note could hide behind the next. At the troublesome key she did not pause.

“That’s finished,” she said.

The boy nodded. She looked toward the door.

“Would you let her know?”

He opened it. Nora Bell was coming from the kitchen with a dish towel over her shoulder. The smell of cut onions entered before she did.

“Already?”