And this music, like that old piano, was what screamed these brutal truths at me in a way that refused to be ignored.

At the same time, the collection of carefully placed notes beckoned to me in their hidden language, a vernacular that my mom had taught me to decipher and translate through the sweet mixture of sound and soul.

I’d stopped singing after she died.

Well. I’d stopped taking lessons.

Sometimes I still sang. Usually when I was in the house by myself. Or to Charlie at night before bed. I never told Charlie the songs were Mom’s. I just sang them so that she would have some pieces of Mom, even if she couldn’t know those pieces for what they were.

Dad and I. We did what we could to keep Mom out of Charlie’s daily life. Far enough out to keep her from asking too many questions, the answers to which were bound to cause pain.

One day soon, though, Charlie would find out the truth.

It was a day I wanted to hide from, and one that Dad wanted to run from.

I sighed, scanning the notes, refusing to blink so that my tears would dry before they could fall.

“So. You had some reasons to be sad, too, huh?” I asked the music, the melody of which could have scored a tragic romance.

Flipping through the pages, I hummed a few bars of the haunting ballad, quietly, just in case Dad happened to be near.

Though my love of music had survived my mother’s death, Dad’s had not, and that’s why I did my best to leave him out of it.

He never said anything, but I could tell that music—certain types that included my singing—bothered him. And yet, he hadn’t so much as lifted a finger to evict the old, broken, and tuneless grand piano sleeping under that dustcover in our ancient new parlor.

I might have taken that as a sign he was finally starting to heal. If I wasn’t so afraid it happened to be a sign of just the opposite.

“Steph?” came my father’s voice from the base of the staircase, startling me into silence. “Mind coming down and giving me a hand with something?”

“Coming,” I called, grabbing my phone.

Then, unable to help myself, I rolled the sheet music into a tube, taking it with me.

Because, for the same reasons Dad needed silence . . . I found myself needing a song.

SIX

Zedok

This time, when Stephanie dreamed, against all odds, she did see me.

My plan to appear to her not as I was, but as I once had been . . . worked.

Though the curse had disallowed the survival of even a single untainted likeness of my former self, I had never forgotten the face that could have once been found in any mirror.

The face was not one easily forgotten. Nor, for that matter, easily ignored.