He pressed D, then let it fade. Newton had been asleep in the armchair since the start of the hour, and the sound did not stir him. James watched the cat’s sides rise and fall with the comfortable indifference of someone who had already made his peace with Newton’s sleeping habits.
“Miss Hartley says I’m different,” he said.
Annabelle kept her voice level. “Different how?”
He thought about it. “She says less crowded in here.” He tapped the side of his head, once, without ceremony. “She usually means the loud parts.”
“And are you? Less crowded?”
“When I’m playing.” He pressed E, held it until the note dissolved. “The loud parts go somewhere else.”
She did not say what she thought of that. Outside, a cart came through the square, and James’s shoulders tightened by afraction, then released. Three weeks ago, the same sound would have brought his hands off the keys entirely, and he would not have found his way back to them for the remainder of the lesson.
“The melody,” he said. “It has a middle part now. Where the left hand does the different thing.”
“The bass line, yes.”
“I didn’t like it at first.”
“I know. Your hands argued.”
“They stopped.” He looked at her with the flat directness he used when stating something he considered settled. “They forgot to think about each other, like you said.”
“Exactly like I said.”
He glanced toward the window. The clock on the mantel read five minutes to twelve. He turned back, and his face had shifted from the satisfaction of a task completed; he seemed to be calculating what to do with the time remaining.
“Uncle Dominic is coming at noon,” he said.
“He is.”
“He’ll be early,” he added with complete certainty. “He always comes early.”
Annabelle agreed, because it was true. In three weeks of the arrangement, Dominic had arrived at noon exactly once. Every other time, he had come up the front steps at between eight and twelve minutes before the hour, looked at the door, waited for it to open, and said as little as possible before leaving.
“I want him to hear it,” James said. “The whole thing.”
She waited.
“He hasn’t,” James said. “He always leaves before I play.” He turned back to the keys, but did not press them. “I want him to stay for one minute and hear it. That’s all.”
“You could ask him.”
“He’ll say no.”
“You can ask anyway.”
James pressed his fingers flat on the keys without depressing them, thinking. “He said the sound hurts his head… but sometimes, I walk past his study, when he leaves the door open, and I hum the melody. When I do that, he doesn’t put his hands over his ears.”
He looked at her, his brow furrowing in confusion.
Annabelle said nothing because she did not know what to say to comfort a child who was wrestling with emotions and circumstances far too complicated.
“I’ve thought about it,” James said, his brow creasing further. “I don’t think his head hurts. I think he’s lying.”
Annabelle bit her lip. The clock on the mantel ticked through several seconds. What was she supposed to tell this innocent child? That she suspected the same? That his uncle had deeper reasons for not wanting to hear music?
“You could tell him what you told me,” Annabelle said.
