ONE
THE SONG OF THE LOST SON
ALEX
For twenty minutes,I had been staring at the door, thinking of excuses to leave. My head was buzzing, and my ears were ringing from all the noise. This kitchen might have been spacious enough for twenty-two people, but it definitely wasn’t built for them all to talk at once. The combination of floor tiles, a relatively low ceiling, and a wooden interior amplified the voices of the Draper family, making them sound even louder than they already were.
Still, the misery I found myself in was no one’s fault but my own. Over the last two years of living with Laura and Daniel (or Dany, as everyone calls him), I had met all the family members separately—except for their son Devin, who hadn’t bothered to come here in years for reasons no one talked about—and each of them had already been lively enough on their own. I should have known how it would end if you threw them all into a room together.
Instead of risking burst eardrums, I could have been in a nice, quiet hotel room in Ashbourne, taking a steamy shower and playing records at full volume. All I would have had to do was thank Laura and Dany for the invitation and decline, like I had the year before.
But now the day was here, and that ship had sailed.
All I could do was get through it, second by second, focusing on my breath and the task at hand: cleaning the dishes. Once that was done, I could sneak outside into the restoring silence of the surrounding mountains and trees.
I raised the sponge from the warm water and squeezed it slowly and purposefully, closing my eyes to listen to the dribble as it hit the surface. Each drop played in the sink as if it were the keys of a piano, offering me exactly what I needed—a moment of focus to help me ignore all the noise—until the sponge was empty and all the sounds around me came rushing back. The coffee machine gargled as it sucked the last drop of water from the tank. Two cows mooed in the shed behind the house. An engine howled on the other side of the valley. Behind me, a hearty laugh was joined by two others, together forming a perfect C major chord. I glanced over my shoulder.
Dany, the head of the family, owner of this house, and therefore, my boss and landlord, held his shaking belly. To his right, his muscular brother-in-law leaned closer, swinging an arm around him. On his left, his sister-in-law tucked her long blonde hair behind her ear as her face flushed red.
“Why did the weatherman’s cheeks turn pink?” she asked, keeping her voice low, probably so the other family members wouldn’t overhear the slightly inappropriate conversation. “Because he saw theclimatechange!”
Their shared laughter rose above everything else like a trombone trio enjoying its moment in the spotlight. Each chuckle pierced my eardrums like an icepick.
My eyes wandered to the older man in the corner, staring absentmindedly out the window while a woman in her forties bombarded him with words, seemingly unaware that he wasn’t listening. Right next to them, a kid was hunched over his phone. The sound of machine guns from whatever he was playing cutthrough the noise, only to be interrupted by a woman’s squeak on the other side of the room as someone hugged her from behind. The walls closed in as I clenched my jaw, the shrill chuckles of everyone around me zooming in as if their only goal was to torture me.
I knew none of them actually wanted to. They were friendly people—kind enough to take me in, give me a roof over my head, and treat me like part of their family, even though I was just a hired hand helping around the house. But try telling that to my freaking sensitive ears.
“Alex,” a friendly voice called out. “You don’t have to do the dishes right now.” Laura—Dany’s wife and therefore my other boss and landlord—placed another dirty cup on the counter.
I tried to smile back at her, but another laugh from the trio behind us made me wince instead.
Laura squeezed her eyes shut. “All this noise must be agony for you.”
“It’s okay.” I clenched my teeth, grabbed the dirty cup, and dropped it into the soapy water. “I’m almost done.”
“You’re too conscientious for your own good.” She straightened her blonde ponytail—that distinctive shade she and her sister shared—and pulled a dish towel from the hook next to the oven. “I can’t just stand here and watch you suffer. Come on. Give your ears a break.” She bumped her hips into mine, nudging me to the side with a grin. “No arguing.”
“No, really, I’m?—”
“Alex.” Her eyes narrowed, and her voice dropped to that stern tone only a boss or a mom could pull off, the kind that makes chills run down your spine and makes you obey. “Take a breather.”
I sighed. Leaving this room was what I had been daydreaming about for almost half an hour now. The headache building at the back of my head screamed at me to go. Besides,Laura certainly wasn’t someone I should argue with, especially after she had just handed me a get-out-of-jail-free card like this.
“Thanks,” I said, my normal voice sounding like a whisper compared to everyone else’s.
Laura winked at me as she took over washing the cups. I dried my hands and slipped past the dining table into the foyer. My eyes went to the staircase leading upstairs to my room, but the chatter from the kitchen followed me, so I headed to the front door instead. I needed to get out of the house for a few minutes, just until the buzzing in my ears stopped.
The pine trees in front of the building rustled in the first warm breeze of the year. I eased the door shut behind me, stepped off the porch, and sank onto the wooden steps, my head dropping between my knees as my hands folded over my ears. I let the sounds of nature wash over me.
If I hadn’t already lived with these sensitive ears of mine for twenty-four years, I might have cursed them, but then again, that wouldn’t have changed anything.
Five minutes later, I could think clearly again. The family’s chatter was still audible, but mostly contained inside the house. A few birds chirped in the trees beside me. Their singing was the central motif—until a quiet hum gently took over, a distant, enchanting melody that captured my full attention in seconds.
The voice of whoever was humming was unlike anything I had ever heard. The timbre was strong yet unafraid to be vulnerable. It was beautiful and honest, yet hidden behind closed lips. The well-trained baritone didn’t belong to any of the Draper men who had been around the house that day.
I craned my neck and turned my head until I could pinpoint the source of the sound. It was coming from behind the trees that shielded the main entrance from the driveway. Whoever was humming was still out of sight but getting closer. Footsteps on the gravel road leading up to the house blended with thehum, as if they were the bass drum of the song. For a moment, everything else faded away. The hum held my undivided attention. If I were to go deaf now and this were the last thing I ever heard, it would play on in my head forever, and I wouldn’t mind at all.
The owner of the beautiful voice stepped around the corner, his song ending abruptly when he set eyes on me.
