And that’s when I heard the music again. It woke me, jarring my foggy mind back to Hurstwell. It wasn’t just any music, but her song. The lost melody that had haunted my childhood.

Mama?

I sat bolt upright, feeling every spring, and shook my head. It had seemed so distant, fading in and out, so I couldn’t be sure I wasn’t imagining it. I must have been half dreaming. But no, it came again, and that melody was unmistakable—it had only ever come from the woman in the rose room as she played with her eyes closed, swaying with the music like no composer I ever knew.

I’d hummed a few bars once, even played pieces of it for Marcel and a few others in the music world, but no one had ever heard it before. I knew then that she had written it—the thing had sprung from her being.

Yet it played now, in this place. Just a simple melody line without the usual embellishments, but it was definitely the same song. I scanned the room, but all was quiet there.

The night fell silent, but then a few notes of the song floated through the air again, minor arpeggios catching my ear from some distant place. My muscles twitched mercilessly, and I was wide awake, staring into the darkness as the song curled around my senses, and I halfway anticipated a ghostly figure with a warm smile to slip into the room when it was done.

Scree. I jumped at the sound of scratching on glass.

Tree at the window. I exhaled.

I rose and wrapped my sheet around myself, moving toward the priest’s hole. Toward the beautiful Broadwood where someone else played the song that belonged to her.

26

Sometimes all it takes is one person, no matter how insignificant, to look at the world differently. Then invite others to do the same.

~Vivienne Mourdant

I stood shaking and panting in that chilly room on the other side of the priest’s hole, staring at the abandoned pianoforte. The haunting melody still echoed through my mind, torturing me with uncertainty, but no one played. No one. The lid was propped up, which must have been why the sound had carried more than it did when I had played, but now the room rang with silence.

Our maid Jessie used to hum, once upon a time. She covered all the sounds of Father’s yelling downstairs with lively music that penetrated my angst, and I later realized it had been intentional. Father’s emotions had swept through our house like the wind puffing a sailing ship in one direction or another, but dear Jessie had shielded me with her lively voice. With music. It had muffled the most jagged parts of my childhood.