I shook my head, worry surging through my veins.

A hand gently took my arm. “And how is it that you’ve come to be here, Miss Mourdant?”

I turned to the bearded man watching me from behind his spectacles and took a deep breath. Then I told my story of coming to this place, of the music being all wrong, and of the unexpected symphony that is Hurstwell.

Hurstwell, my prison. My rescue. The dark asylum that needed light.

Reprise

If only the whole world could feel the power of harmony.

~Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

SIX MONTHS LATER

So many people despise the boring days, the uneventful seasons. They must not have experienced difficulty and so cannot properly value normalcy. They overlook the simple brilliance of Mozart in favor of the more surprising works of Liszt. But there’s a sweetness to the Mozart days, the ones where everything happens just as you expect, just as it did the day before.

I’d made a rhythm of my life. I watched the sun set at my childhood home, playing my own pianoforte, then at daybreak I watched the sun rise in the windows of Hurstwell, and witnessed a beautiful dawn coming to the place—and to my sister.

Harford had gently nurtured life back into her, drawing out her natural ability to read music and people. She had easily picked up the threads of his research, having an almost instinctive sense of how to match a person’s rhythm and use her music to draw them out. She would one day take the reins from him completely, and in that work she would shine.

As a result, so would Hurstwell.

When I passed the large, empty office where she was now established with her own pianoforte from our shop, I slowed in the doorway. I looked upon the slender figure of my childhood vision, her long hair now freshly oiled and hanging down over her back, as her song was unleashed upon the old instrument like a gentle wave upon the seashore.

Bridget brushed past with a smile and a begging of my pardon as she led a gowned patient into the room, settling her beside the musician for her session. Rose paused to smile at the newcomer, her nature as warm and welcoming as she’d once been to a lonely little girl.

Bridget left them and paused to lean against the wall beside me. “A wonder to think she can still play, after all these years.”

I nodded. “She’s a bit rusty, but it isn’t something one forgets.”

“Think she’ll hear again? All the way, I mean?”