Kaminski saw the sign for La Musica from a block away, and instantly wished that the walk could have been longer. With a few more steps, perhaps she could have found the emotional strength she craved, the strength she needed before breaking terrible news to such a nice man. But it was not to be. She had arrived, and she could think of no reason not to enter the shop.

Passing across the threshold was like stepping backward a hundred years. Narrow, dark and deep, the shop reminded her of a cave; where there would be bats, dozens of violins and violas and cellos hung instead from the ceiling, each of them glimmering as if they’d been freshly dusted. Double basses lined the left-hand wall, and along the right, countless pages of sheet music peeked out from above their wooden racks. At the very back of the store . . .

Actually, she couldn’t see the back of the store through the shadows that cloaked it.

“Felicia?”

The voice came from behind her—from the cash register she had not seen, hidden away as it was around the corner at the very front of the store. She instantly recognized the heavily accented voice as that of Signor Abe, but she jumped anyway as she whirled to look at him.

“Felicia, what’s wrong?” Even as he spoke, he was on his way around to the front of the tiny counter, moving as quickly as his arthritic hips would allow him. “What has happened?”

The flood of emotion hit out of nowhere, all at once. “Uncle Henryk is dead,” she managed to say, but her next words were lost in her sobs.

Abe Nowakowski locked the door to his shop at mid-day, something he’d never done before, and helped his beautiful young friend up the back steps to his flat on the second floor. There he fixed her some tea and listened to her story.

Kaminski hated herself for losing control of her emotions this way, but there were times in the next hour when she feared that her tears would never stop. They did, of course, eventually, but she sensed that Signor Abe would have sat with her for as long as he needed to.

“These things take time,” he said. He was a little man, a round man, with leathery skin and thick white hair that could never be tamed by a comb. When he spoke softly like this, his normally strong voice grew raspy. “I lost my Maria six years ago now, and while sometimes it feels as though the hole in my heart has healed, there are days when the pain is as raw as the day she died. I’ve come to think of the pain as proof that I loved her as much as I told her I did.”

The tea was awful, overly strong and overly sweet. “Did you know this might happen to my uncle, Signor Abe?” she asked.