The rabbi had said that God was everywhere: in the sky and the earth and the sea. Staring at the waterfall, Nola tried to empty her mind of all thoughts, to become one with nature and perhaps to discover God. But as the water bubbles popped at the surface of the pond, they burst with images from the Dying Rooms: the hare-lipped baby who had clutched at her; the sick infant being eaten alive by a rat; the cold loft stuffed with shivering babies who lingered in vomit and excrement. How many had died in the fourteen hours since she had been there?

In the greenish water, lilies floated on the surface, their delicate pink flowers swaying in the soft breeze. A frog burped and jumped onto a leaf. A dragonfly buzzed, its translucent wings catching the sun’s rays and breaking them into rainbow-colored prisms. The wind rustled through the cluster of cattails.

When Daniel had said she had more power than she gave herself credit for, he had no knowledge of the times she had faced almost-empty venues, or her grueling sixteen-hour days, or that she was still only as good as her last album. Yet, in her anger, she had told Wade that she would become the voice of these babies. How unrealistic. It was one thing to fight for Lulu’s adoption and quite another to fight for the fate of millions of abandoned babies. How presumptuous to think she had the power to move a government! But then again, her parents’ friends—those scruffy hippies of her childhood—had done just that. With demonstrations and music, they had forced the ending of the Vietnam War.

Lulu’s cupid mouth stretched into a smile as she slept, and she emitted a tiny satisfied sigh. Unlike the Dying Rooms babies. The words blasted in Nola's head. Eighty percent. How could she not act?

A pink petal fell into the water and lolled a bit before slowly sinking. The green depth hid it, never again to be seen by a human eye. Lost forever. So was the flash of orange caught in the wing of a monarch butterfly. So were those starved, neglected babies.

Like a time-lapsed photograph of a flower opening, a song began to build in Nola. The babies who died were like flowers blooming unseen and doomed to die unenjoyed, their beauty never admired, their sweet scent never savored.

The words, inspired by Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” and the music, shorthand for emotions, emerged. Nola began to hum. Flower babies bloom unseen, Flower babies die unloved. The music presented itself, as though it had merely been hibernating in her and was lazily waking out of its slumber.

She stood up and sounded the words, tasting them, feeling their flavor in her stomach and throat. Her diaphragm expanded as the music rose within her, starting, erasing itself, starting again.