Part 4
Ms. Voss drew a breath that sounded as though an answer had been ready. She let it out without giving that answer.
“I have been doing that,” she said finally.
Lucy waited. The teacher didn’t ask her to agree that they were all right now.
“I’m sorry, Lucy. You don’t have to say anything back.” Ms. Voss took a step toward the door. “I’ll let you practice.”
“When Tyler starts over, could you wait without doing that sigh?”
Ms. Voss nodded. “I’ll pay attention to that.”
After the door closed, Lucy opened the paper and balanced it on the music rack. The green outlines were a little crooked. She found the corresponding notes beneath them and played the first exercise Hannah had ever taught her.
Five notes up, five notes down. She tried the other hand. Then both.
When the librarian appeared forty-five minutes later with her keys, Lucy had worked through scales and a passage of the nocturne. She folded the paper before shutting the piano, taking care not to catch a corner in the lid.
That evening, Nora discovered that the classroom recording contained much more than a percussion exercise. Her mother watched it with her, then sent an email to Daniel and Dr. Bennett asking what they wanted done. She didn’t upload it anywhere.
Daniel played the video at the kitchen table. He reached the end, sat without moving, and pressed play again. Lucy watched only long enough to hear Ms. Voss tell her to get up.
“I don’t want that part going around,” she said.
He stopped the recording.
Dr. Bennett helped arrange an edit beginning with Lucy seated at the instrument. Daniel approved sharing that version with Willowbank and with their relatives. He put the permission in writing so nobody would have to guess what he had agreed to.
A cousin, proud and less careful, posted the performance where anyone could see it. Two days later, people well outside their family were passing it along.
The attention stayed mostly regional. There were no camera crews waiting at school, but music teachers forwarded the clip to one another. Parents recognized Cedar Ridge’s room and sent it to friends. Andrea Keller, Willowbank’s director, watched it on Thursday and contacted Dr. Bennett before the school day ended.
Meanwhile, the district reviewed what had happened before the music began. Ms. Voss received a written reprimand and required coaching on equitable classroom practice. She would continue teaching, with observations from the principal and shared responsibility for judging concert auditions.
Daniel had expected knowing the consequences to make him feel better. Instead, he found himself thinking about the next child who might stand beside that bench.
“I don’t need her career ruined,” he told Dr. Bennett. “I need to know another kid won’t get that treatment.”
“That’s what the follow-up is for. A letter in a file won’t do it by itself.”
At school, Lucy couldn’t recover the ordinary anonymity she’d had before Tuesday. Children wanted to know whether she could play something from a movie or learn their favorite song. One boy asked if her father had to buy insurance for her fingers. When she stared at him, he explained that he’d heard about that on television.
Nora apologized for not noticing that the tablet was still running. She showed Lucy the edited version and which adults had received it. Lucy appreciated being told, although she wasn’t sure how to ask everyone to stop looking at her quite so much.
Simon found her at lunch, carrying his violin case because he didn’t trust the crowded rack outside the classroom.
“I’ve got some music with a piano part. Would you want to try it?”
Lucy took time to finish chewing. “Possibly.”
“You don’t have to say yes because people are being weird about the recording. I was there when you played. I’d have asked anyway.”
“I saw you,” she said.
He looked relieved, and she almost smiled into her milk carton.
Paige kept her distance for several days. Then she brought a sonata page to Lucy’s desk during independent work. A pencil bracket enclosed the passage her private teacher kept correcting.
“Apparently this sounds hurried. I don’t hear it when I’m doing it.”
Lucy looked at the bracket. “I remember this part. Your left hand starts getting ahead, and your right hand has to catch it.”
Paige pressed her lips together. “So you hear it, too.”
“A little.”
Paige retrieved the page with a reluctant nod. The next day, she didn’t turn away when Lucy came into the room.
Willowbank scheduled the audition for Saturday morning. Its classrooms occupied Millhaven’s former public library, a brick building with worn stone steps and a broad doorway that still carried the shape of its old sign. Music came from rooms that had once held shelves.
Daniel had ironed his one good shirt. Lucy brought no scores; the pieces she trusted were the ones she could remember.
Andrea Keller greeted them in the recital room and asked about Lucy’s lessons and the times Daniel could bring her. Beside her sat a faculty pianist with an evaluation sheet. The third person was Beatrice Lawson, an older woman who kept a cane against her knee and watched Lucy without smiling for encouragement.
The grand’s action was firmer than the school instrument’s. Lucy adjusted during the nocturne, gradually learning how much the keys asked of her. She finished without looking toward the table.
Andrea asked what other music she knew.
“Some Debussy. Clair de Lune. I can’t finish it.”
The pianist made a note. Beatrice leaned forward.
“Let us hear where you’ve got to.”
Lucy began carefully. She could hear Hannah playing ahead of her, but as she approached the passage she’d avoided for months, hearing wasn’t enough to tell her hands what to do. Her fingers rested on the keys without pressing them.
“She got too sick before we finished,” Lucy said. “I know how it sounds. I can’t find what she showed me.” Beatrice pushed herself up with the cane. At the piano, she took a score from the rack and located the measure where Lucy had stopped. “Move over a little,” she said. “You’ve shown us where you need a teacher…”
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