“Um, they were a band. From Denmark. The meaning of the letter is exactly what it says—that Marissa misses me and she loves me. And she even tells me to be nice to you, there at the end. There isn’t any hidden message; it reads weird because it’s just entirely MelodEye lyrics.”

“Why is it entirely MelodEye lyrics?”

Ángel sighed, scratching his head. “It’s—it’s kind of a joke? She knew I would like it.”

Oberon kept examining him with those faultless gold-green eyes, so Ángel tried again. “We met in college and we bonded over MelodEye songs. They were really popular in the seventies, so almost everyone knows their songs, but they are definitely not a cool band, and when we found out we both loved them, it was like . . . We went to their reunion concert together a few years ago, and we were the youngest people there, and it was incredibly great. She knew I would remember the times we went out and danced to these songs, or when we played them and sang them together. She knew it would make me happy to think of that.” He looked down at the paper. “She’s a very cool person. Honestly, you can’t blame Chandler for not getting it, because no one else would think to write a letter like this. It probably took Marissa hours to find lyrics that would make even this much sense.”

“It is a gift of love that she made for you.”

“Yeah,” said Ángel, tears pricking his eyes. “That’s what it is.”

“Thank you for the explanation.” Oberon’s voice held that warm sweet timbre that it sometimes took on. “I’ll tell Chandler not to threaten to cut you off from Marissa again.”

Ángel breathed deeply, and the constriction in his chest eased. “That means a lot to me.”

“Would I like MelodEye songs?”

Ángel laughed. “I don’t know. But you uploaded a bunch of them from my phone, so you can check them out. I should warn you, though,” he added, “it ain’t no Shostakovich. MelodEye can be kind of awesomely dumb.”

Oberon emitted a low subsonic rumble. “I’m not sure what ‘awesomely dumb’ means.”

Ángel smiled at him. “Well, listen to some MelodEye and you’ll see.”

At dinner they perched, as usual, on stools at the island in the kitchen, and as they ate soup Oberon told Lily that Ángel had introduced him to MelodEye. “Oh my Lord,” said Lily, “that’s all they played at my sister Tammy’s wedding reception. Everyone danced. You should have seen all the old Vietnamese men dancing to ‘Waterloo.’”

“That was ABBA,” said Ángel. “Lots of people get them mixed up. MelodEye was like ABBA’s less-cool Danish cousin.”

“Did MelodEye do ‘Dancing Queen’?”

“ABBA. MelodEye did ‘Baltic Rain.’” He sang a few bars, and she nodded.