Maybe the heat or cold of the attic had damaged the photo? Or maybe just time.

I rooted through the papers and, in addition to a faded ocean liner ticket from London, I found another small full-body photo—this one almost halfway blacked out.

A single figure—the same young man from the family photo, I guessed—posed as the portrait’s subject. He wore a long black dress coat open over a waistcoat. One hand held a violin. The other gripped its bow. Above that, the photo dissolved into the same blackness that had ruined the previous photo. Again, the blotching obscured the man’s face and head. All except for the very edge of his sleek and longish black hair.

My immediate guess was that he had to be the son of the couple. Which would make the little girl his sister. Could the family be the original owners of the house?

I looked up as a breeze rushed in through the window, sending a flutter of loose papers over the attic. In the distance, a rumble of thunder sounded.

“Great.” Dropping the photos, I hurried to the window and cranked it shut, eyeing the storm-darkened clouds above.

If Charlie woke and the power went out, she was going to lose her mind.

I made a beeline for my phone, but paused when my foot encountered one of the papers the sudden gale had sent scattering off a nearby desk.

Sheet music?

Bending, I plucked the yellowed paper from the floor. Then turned to find another pair of papers filled with more music, the notes of which had been etched onto the lines by hand.

No name or signature headed or footed any of the papers. Still, the romantic in me wanted to believe the long-gone mystery violin guy had been the composer. The paper felt and looked old enough, but the notes themselves gleamed crisp and fresh. I ran my thumb over a quarter note, causing a faint smudge that, if nothing else, proved the intricate piece to be unquestionably modern.

Forgetting my phone for a moment, I took to the task of gathering the other sheets. Though I told myself it was because the ballad was handwritten and therefore original and possibly one of a kind . . . I knew that wasn’t the real reason.

Mom. She was the true reason.

For the second time that day, a wave of crushing sadness washed over me. And there I went again, careening backward through the years until I was once more seated on a piano bench next to my mother, my small, Charlie-sized legs kicking in time with the metronome while Mama sang . . . and played.

That bench. It was a spot she and I shared well into the years my feet no longer dangled. And those were the years when I had done the singing.

That morning, it had been the memory of her music—something that I recalled now better even than her face—that had killed me.

Now? In this moment? It was the fact that Charlie would never have her turn on that seat.