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I’ve never heard him do this.

And his voice is lower than I expected.

Rough around the edges, too.

Not perfect.

I’m glad it isn’t.

Because perfect would ruin it.

I move closer and listen intensely. There is something vulnerable in the way he sings, something almost painfully human beneath the rasp. Behind these doors he isn’t performing for an audience. There is no stage, no camera, no choreography, no crowd waiting to scream his name.

He’s just singing.

And accordingly to Mrs. Han, he’s singing to the moon. Somehow that makes it more beautiful.

I lean my shoulder against the wall and let his melody wrap itself around me.

I know should leave.

Instead, I listen closely and it takes me back to the first time I heard one of his songs. I was young enough that my music collection was still mostly classical.

Debussy.

Chopin.

Tchaikovsky.

Rachmaninoff.

Music that made sense to me because it didn’t need to explain itself.

It simply moved something inside of me and Stephen’s music did something strangely similar. Not because it sounded like classical music.

Because it didn’t.

His was louder. Rougher. Sometimes vulgar enough that I questioned whether the human race had made any progress at all.

But his lyrics penetrated. They found places I didn’t know I had.

He’s a genius lyricist. He can take anger and loneliness and turn them into something that sounded beautiful.

Something outside catches my attention.

I turn toward the windows. Everything is covered in snow until I notice something glimmering beneath it.

I step closer and stop.

A lake.

Frozen solid beneath the night sky, its surface stretching through the grounds like a sheet of silver glass. Tiny lights have been placed around its edges, glowing softly beneath the snow.

Some are strung between the pine trees and others line the perimeter of the lake.

It looks like an outdoor skating rink.

How did I not know this was here?