2. August

Chapter two

August

N ever in this lifetime would I knot a tie correctly on the first try. For a man who had worn a tie nearly daily for the vast part of twenty years, my astounding ineptitude shocked almost everyone. Tugging the Windsor loose, I started again while listening for signs of a teenager getting ready for her first official day of school.

Ever.

The cottage—it certainly wasn’t my customary type of living arrangement—remained ever silent. Ties and teenagers. Both were the bane of my existence. If I could adapt to raising the latter, I would never complain about the former again.

“Constance? I hope you’re ready. We need to leave in ten minutes.”

I didn’t expect a reply and received none.

Reworking the knot, I hummed a troublesome exposition from the sonata I’d been working on. It erased the sullen quietude of our new living space. When playing the piano, flute, or any instrument, my fingers moved deftly without thought or struggle. Ask them to fold a simple piece of silk into something resembling grade-school origami, and they floundered.

I fit the final product snugly under my shirt collar and tipped my head side to side, evaluating its suitability.

“Not bad. Third time’s a charm. Maybe I’m… Damn.” I touched a spot on my jaw where I’d missed shaving. “Constance? Are you dressed?”

No response.

I sent a prayer heavenward. “Lord, give me strength so I don’t wring her neck.”

Retrieving a straight razor from its case, I fixed the shaving problem before assessing my presence in the bathroom mirror for the hundredth time. I buttoned my jacket, smoothed the front, unbuttoned it, and buttoned it again before adjusting a mahogany strand of hair that had snuck out of place. A brow gone astray caught my attention. I smoothed a finger over the culprit. When it refused to cooperate, I tweezed the mutineer.

“Good enough.” Shadows hung beneath my eyes. The first sign of crow’s feet had developed over the past two months. Worry lines created crevices across my once smooth forehead. The unpredictability of my once orderly life was taking a toll.

The man in the mirror was not me. He was a tired version.

“Constance?”

God help me. What was a person supposed to do with a teenager who didn’t listen and refused to speak?

“I didn’t sign up for this,” I muttered.

Except I had.

The opening to Verdi’s Requiem , “Dies Irae” exploded in my head, a punctuation of nervous energy, a soundtrack to accompany the most troublesome task ahead: Parenting a Teenager. Was it overly dramatic? Perhaps.

I hummed the parts of specific instruments as the music flowed through my veins. My fingers twitched until I submitted and waved an invisible baton, conducting the unseen orchestra. Each resounding thwack of the bass drum hit hard, and I punctuated the sound with a flick of my wrist and a snap of my elbow.

Beauty.

Art.

Passion.

My daughter appeared at the bathroom door, and the orchestra faded. The man in the mirror came back into focus. “Verdi,” I explained unnecessarily.

Her expressionless stare was the only response I was going to get. She didn’t care. Not about me.

“Are you ready?”

She half shrugged, hugging her school cardigan tighter around her middle. The Timber Creek uniform consisted of a pleated navy skirt—or pants since the academy claimed to be progressive and didn’t require their female students to wear skirts if they didn’t want to—a white blouse with the Timber Creek emblem embroidered on the pocket, white knee socks, and black leather dress shoes.

Constance had artfully knotted a fashionable scarf with a navy and white patterned design around her neck. It was a necessity, not an act of rebellion. The excess makeup and chunky jewelry, however, crossed lines I’d recently drawn. Again, she didn’t care.

Instead of rebuking her heavily lined eyes and brightly painted lips, lecturing her yet again, I tugged the edges of my suit jacket and lifted my chin. “How’s the tie? Did I get it straight?”

Constance spent less than a second examining the accessory before giving a halfhearted shrug that neither approved nor disapproved of the finished product.

“It was a simple question.”

I earned a sneer.

“Are you nervous?”

No response.

“You’re being rude.”

She glared, lips pursed, nose wrinkled.

“Look, I know you don’t want me dropping you off, but I need to get a look at their music room, assess their supplies, and see what I have to work with.”

She rolled her eyes in a manner teenage girls had been perfecting for centuries.

“What?”

She sharply shook her head, whipping a braid over her shoulder as though the violent gesture explained everything.

“I know you don’t want to go to school here, but—”

Constance huffed. Her hands flew in a string of sign language that made no sense to me.

“Stop. You know I don’t understand when you—”

She stamped her foot in frustration and stormed away. The middle finger displayed over her shoulder, I did understand.

I unbuttoned my suit jacket and flicked off the bathroom light, gritting my teeth as I called after her with as much patience as I could muster. “You look lovely in your uniform, but it’s cold and snowy. You would be better off wearing boots and packing your shoes.”

The double thump of leather loafers hitting the wall sounded from the front hall. A moment later— slam .

“I’m glad we had this chat,” I muttered under my breath in my native Greek. Despite her objection, I told Constance’s mother that I would encourage our daughter to use English. Like her parents, Constance was fluent in several languages but stubbornly stuck to the only one I didn’t know.

Jittery, remorseful, and defeated, I briefly closed my eyes and returned to Verdi, seeking balance. If I could have conjured something more tranquil, I would have, but that wasn’t how my brain operated. Internal soundtracks reflected my emotions, and they couldn’t be swayed to change. It wasn’t a radio I could switch to a new station. When music played inside my head, I was at its mercy. All I could do was listen.

Life had thrown me a curveball in October. After months of brooding and arguing with Constance’s mother, I made the executive decision to send my daughter to private school. I would take time off work and learn to be a father, but it was temporary. Once Constance was settled, I would return to my abandoned life and be at peace once more.

Perhaps staying in Canada was the wrong decision. Time would tell.

***

Constance marched ten feet ahead, plowing a path through the freshly fallen snow like she’d been born in the tundra and not in a climate where the temperatures rarely dipped below ten degrees Celsius. She pretended I didn’t exist, refusing to hear me reminisce about adventures skiing in the Alps or the time I’d spent in Russia during one of the worst winters imaginable. She didn’t care about the uniqueness of snowflakes, nor did she want to stop to admire the tranquility of a half-frozen lake in winter.

When the impractical boots her mother had bought didn’t do their job and she slipped on an icy patch, landing hard on one knee, Constance thwarted any attempt to help her up. She struggled with her backpack and angrily brushed the snow and debris off her stockings before delivering me a scathing look as though I’d been the person to orchestrate her fall.

Off she went.

Constance didn’t want a father. She didn’t want to go to a real school. I wasn’t sure she knew what she wanted. The only thing that seemed clear was how much she hated the sudden shift in the direction of her life.

Join the club , I thought.

I jogged to keep up. “We have to stop at the office to get your schedule.”

She walked faster.

“Dr. McCaine promised no physical education. You’re welcome, by the way. I fought for you.”

No gratitude.

I would be more apt to get a response from the frozen trees and frost-crusted pinecones than my daughter.

I couldn’t decide if Constance was angry because I’d made her go to school, because I’d accepted a guest teaching position at said school, because I wouldn’t yet let her live in the dorms with the other girls her age, because her mother had gotten herself in a tangle and forced her into my care, because I refused to take her back to Greece and her grandparents, because the latest advancement in technology and her subsequent surgery hadn’t lived up to her expectations, or simply because she was fourteen and hormonal. It was Russian roulette, and no matter where the spinner landed, the answer was wrong.

No handbook existed to explain Constance’s frequently swaying moods, and she refused to talk about her feelings no matter how many times I pried.

The confusing floor plan of Timber Creek’s main building forced her to slow down and await directions. Constance had declined to accompany me the previous week when I’d filled out registration forms, so it was her first time in the main body of the school.

Students bustled up and down the wide corridors as a shrill bell announced the commencement of first period. Their overlapping voices echoed off the high ceiling, and I dodged a few swinging backpacks as their owners raced past so they wouldn’t be late.

The century-old architecture gave the premises a sophisticated, erudite appeal. Photographs of directors and other prominent figures from decades past hung in ornate frames along the walls in the administration hall. The brass plates on mounted plaques—ones displaying high achievements—glistened as though recently polished. Timber Creek’s reputation as one of the highest academic academies in the province was what first attracted me to the idea of sending Constance here.

Besides, we needed space from one another if we were going to survive this father-daughter nonsense. Neither of us was much fond of the other. Once I reassured myself that she was settled—a month or two, I figured—I could return to my normal life as a full-time musician and a less than part-time parent. If she moved into the school’s dormitories, I could book a few performances with my agent and travel anywhere I pleased.

I was counting the weeks, days, and hours.

Inside the administration office, Constance put a hand on my chest and shook her head. She’d styled her flaxen hair in double French braids, and they swung with her adamancy.

Her mouth formed the word no as her fingers made one of the few signs I understood.

“You don’t want me to go in?”

A stubborn head shake. Freckles dotted the bridge of her nose, and her electric-green eyes said all she couldn’t—or wouldn’t.

“All right.” I touched the knot of my necktie, and Constance swatted my hand. She fixed it straight, pulled it tight until it choked me, and offered the barest suggestion of a smile before making a shooing motion.

“I plan to check out the music room and meet the head of the department to coordinate our schedules. Then I’ll head… home”—it was hard to consider the cottage home —“to work on that damnable sonata. If you need me—”

Constance shoved me toward the door, nonverbally indicating she was perfectly fine on her own.

Dr. Justine McCaine emerged from a private office on the left and beamed. “Oh, hello. You must be Constantina.”

A remarkable change overtook my daughter. She spun, affecting an air of innocence, of girlhood. I hadn’t seen her wear that smile since a long-ago birthday. Was she five? Maybe six? It was before everything in her life had changed. Before the subsequent surgery. Before her mother revealed her true nature and Constance ended up in my care.

Dr. McCaine guided Constance into her office with a gentle touch to her shoulder. “Will you be joining us, Maestro?”

I cringed. “Please, call me August.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

My daughter’s imploring gaze warned me off. “I’ll let Constance get settled on her own. Could you direct me to the music room?”

Dr. McCaine’s instructions were fundamentally flawed—or my sense of direction was skewed. I got turned around more than once and second-guessed if I’d heard her correctly. Thankfully, after arriving at the same back exit for the third time in a row, a friendly student helped aim me in the right direction. “Down that hall. It’s adjacent to the gymnasium. You can’t miss it. There are music notes on the door.”

Finally on the right track, I followed the thump of basketballs and screech of youthful voices along a lengthy hallway. I couldn’t say I was pleased that the music and physical education departments shared a wing. The excess noise could prove to be problematic. I prayed for soundproof walls and decent acoustics. What were the chances in a century-old building?

Slim.

When I came to a door with a winding staff and improperly hung musical notes, I paused. The treble clef dangled upside down. Quarter notes, following an improperly written key signature, waved their flags in the wrong direction. Utter nonsense. Who had done this? Why?

The impulse to fix the mess was too strong to resist. I hoped the carelessness wasn’t an indication of the quality of the music department. I’d been led to believe Timber Creek hired the most superior educators.

Once the notes, key signature, and treble clef were properly arranged—the lack of a time signature bothered me greatly—I let myself in. I was given to understand that Mr. Edwidge had planning time during first period, so I wasn’t surprised to find the classroom empty of teenagers.

A lone man sat at an upright piano—a Steinway in poor condition—playing an instantly recognizable sonata, his back to the door. I’d performed the technically demanding piece several times in the past.

Not wanting to interrupt—and curious about how he would handle the upcoming third movement—I took a moment to evaluate the space where my daughter would spend most of her time. Where I had agreed to spend a great deal of my time.

A bank of old-fashioned chalkboards lined one wall, the remains of chalk dust leaving them an uneven, smoky gray color. Motivational posters hung above them by the ceiling. Music is a safe kind of high, and The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is practice . One in particular caught my attention. Where words fail, music speaks . Instead of fostering enlightenment, as I supposed was its purpose, the words felt like a personal attack on my recent situation.

The room was set up like an orchestra pit with four levels of risers surrounding a conductor’s podium in the center. The piano sat off to the side, angled to face the empty seats and music stands.

The man’s fingers danced beautifully over the ivories. His control and dynamics were admirable, if not slightly inconsistent. It was not performance-worthy, but he had potential.

In the back corner of the room, a glossy black five-piece Pearl drum set shared space with a timpani and xylophone. A few other percussion instruments had been carelessly discarded on a nearby table. Drumsticks and a spread of sheet music joined the chaos.

As the intensity of the sonata heightened, I tuned in to the room’s acoustics. Not bad. Not great. The back wall and ceiling had been padded with popcorn material meant to absorb sound, but the other three walls were not effective in that regard.

The tempo shifted and changed. My attention returned to the man at the piano. He had hair the color of wheat during a fall harvest with variegated highlights of greige, gold, and faded sepia. It was long and tied in a rough knot at his nape. Several flyaways rested messily on his shoulders and fanned wildly around his temples.

I moved farther into the room, angling myself to view him in partial profile. Strong yet gentle jawline. A tawny, tightly groomed beard. Sharp nose. Parted lips. Brows set at a concentrated angle. His focus was such that he didn’t notice me, even when I was surely in his line of sight.

With shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, the muscles and tendons along his forearms showed, moving and straining with the increased tempo and power with which he played. His long fingers danced marvelously, and I was entranced. Not because he was attractive—the thought alone was troublesome—but because it was a challenging piece, even for an experienced pianist.

I inched closer on silent feet until I was near enough to make out the sheet music propped on the rack.

Perhaps he sensed a presence or disturbance in the air. Perhaps he smelled my cologne and knew he was being watched. Regardless, the man fumbled the especially difficult transition into the third movement as I suspected he might and stopped playing with a heavy sigh. “Goddammit.”

He plucked a pencil from the rack and made a notation on the page where he’d erred. Rearranging the sheet music, he picked up where he left off and got a decent way through the final movement before floundering again.

“Dammit.”

“You shouldn’t be too hard on yourself. Maurice Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit requires extraordinary dexterity and control. Especially the third movement. The complexity is astounding, and you performed reasonably well, considering.”

The man abruptly spun on the piano bench, eyes wide, mouth agape at finding he wasn’t alone. He must not have sensed me after all.

In an instant, his captivating beauty held me prisoner and stole my ordered thoughts.

“You startled me,” he said, hand to chest.

I cleared my throat and shook free the peril of his good looks. “Pardon the intrusion. It was not my intent.” I extended my hand to shake. “August Castellanos.”

The man looked at the whole of me for a long time before rising from the bench and obliging the offered greeting.

His hand was warm and soft. A delicate grip. Eyes the same sun-drenched shade as his disordered hair took me in from head to toe, their shocked expression replaced with curiosity and what seemed a touch of discord.

“Niles Edwidge. It’s… nice to meet you.” The pause negated the claim. “I wasn’t expecting you today. I was told you started on Wednesday.”

“That’s correct. I planned to help my daughter get oriented, but she… doesn’t require my assistance, so I figured I’d stop in and introduce myself.”

The man was without a necktie, his collar open and revealing more skin than was appropriate. Something about the corded tendons bracketing his throat drew my attention more than once, distorting my thoughts. His collarbones showed at the edges of his shirt, and I wondered at their definition, curious about what was still concealed.

I cleared my throat again, ejecting the unsuitable musings and motioning to the piano. “Do you mind…”

Mr. Edwidge hesitated, and although he stepped aside and waved for me to take a seat, I sensed that allowing me the honor was the last thing he wanted to do. “Please.”

I sat, gathered the spread of sheet music into a pile, and handed it to the perplexed and annoyed-looking music teacher. “Follow along. I’ll offer some tips for that tricky transition and give you feedback about your attempt.”

I closed my eyes and felt every note of the sonata resonate in my bones as it came back to me. It had been years, but my music recall was far superior to the average person’s. If I played a piece once, it lived in my heart eternally.

I moved flawlessly through the first movement, “Ondine,” and transitioned to the second before eyeing Mr. Edwidge. He hugged the stack of pages to his chest, his face as impassive and unreadable as my teenage daughter’s.

“You’re not following along.”

He stared, unmoving.

“Ravel is especially talented when it comes to creating texture and innovative harmonies. This piece is profoundly technical and demands much from the pianist, so don’t be discouraged. In ‘Le Gibet,’ the second movement, the hardest part is when the notes are split.” I played through them effortlessly. “The melody is in the left hand. You want to be sure the bell comes through. Don’t let it get lost underneath. Hear how I ensure its prominence? It’s structurally important and should be emphasized. You can’t beat at it with no heart.”

I played a few more measures. “Don’t rush. Your pacing was all over the place. It’s a common mistake. You can use a slower tempo. You’ll have more control, and it’s powerful that way, don’t you think?”

Mr. Edwidge didn’t respond.

Again, I let the music flow, let it speak what I couldn’t articulate. Gaspard de la Nuit was a twenty-two-minute sonata that couldn’t be hurried. Each movement required tender, loving care. I wanted to consume every note. Drink of their essence. Live, breathe, and love the composition as it was intended.

The third movement approached. The section where Mr. Edwidge had initially stumbled.

“Ah, here we go. The lovely ‘Scarbo.’ It’s wonderfully nightmarish, don’t you think? A tricky transition. A lot of people struggle to manage it. Here. Listen. I suggest training yourself to use one finger when the tempo takes on this rhythm. It requires building tension in your forearm. I saw you using two. Not ideal. Some people use three, but it shows. It reflects in the smoothness of the piece, making the pianissimo hard to maintain. But if you can find the control with a single digit, you’ll get the effect you’re looking for. Do you hear it?”

I stayed with that section of the movement longer, repeating a few bars to demonstrate. “Listen to how quietly I can play. Like a tremor. It hits a nerve. The adjustment from two fingers to one can change the mood entirely. This effect simply cannot be simulated any other way. Practice, Mr. Edwidge. It all comes down to practice.”

I played past that point, moving toward another section I wanted to address. “I recommend taking more bass with the whole of ‘Scarbo.’ It does well with that added emphasis. And watch your timing. Again, you were rushing. It’s funny. Everyone I’ve heard play this piece tends to fluctuate their tempo to suit themselves. They race through it, thinking speed is required when it isn’t. The problem with going too fast is you can’t maintain the same tempo in other sequences. You’re constantly adjusting, so the smooth effect is lost, and it becomes stilted and choppy. One pace. Slow and measured. Beginning to end. Let the dynamics speak for themselves.”

I concluded the sonata with the dramatics it demanded and spun to face Mr. Edwidge, whose lips were pressed together in a firm line as he continued to hug the stack of sheet music. In the whole twenty minutes, he hadn’t moved.

The pale skin at his exposed throat stretched long with his raised chin, unwittingly drawing my focus again.

Warmth suffused the inner lining of my belly, and I subconsciously touched the strangling knot of my necktie before recalling my daughter’s reprimand and dropping the hand to my lap. “I hope that helps.”

Mr. Edwidge ran his tongue along the inside of his upper teeth before plastering on a less-than-genuine smile. “I’ll keep your suggestions in mind, Maestro.” His tone suggested otherwise.

Nonetheless, I nodded, appeased. I’d trained plenty of stubborn pupils over the years who needed time for their bruised egos to mend before they understood the value of a lesson.

Silence prevailed. Short of staring at the man, I admired the Steinway instead, noting its flaws. Chipped ivories. Blemished wood. Scratches and ink stains. Its condition bruised my soul. I tinkled a few keys.

“The piano is slightly out of tune. I would suggest—”

“It’s not.”

I turned at the snappy tone. “But I assure you, it is. I have an ear for these things, and—”

“As do I, and I’m telling you, the tuning is fine.”

I thought it best not to argue or debate the acuity of pitch with a high school music teacher, so I acquiesced. Again. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected from our first meeting, but it wasn’t this… tension.

Not only was my presence clearly unwelcomed, but I was inordinately distracted by the man’s hippiesque hairstyle, unshaven jaw, and sunset eyes—never mind the eloquent stretch of his long neck and those pronounced collarbones that vanished mysteriously under his shirt. I wished he would find a tie and button up so my mind would quit wandering into the gutter.

It had been many years since I’d had to fight the impulsive need to look at a man.

Mr. Edwidge cleared his throat and erased some of the friction from the room. “I suppose we should… discuss your role in the classroom, figure out what you plan to teach over the coming weeks, and—”

“Months.”

“Excuse me?”

“I was assured a position for a few months.”

“A position?”

“Yes.”

“They’re paying you?”

“It’s trivial, but Dr. McCaine insisted.”

Mr. Edwidge’s troubled gaze flicked over my face. “That’s not what I was told.”

It was said more to himself than to me. I didn’t know how to respond.

“A few months?” he repeated.

“Yes. My daughter… she… I anticipate she’ll need at least a semester to adapt before I can comfortably return to work. When I enrolled her, I promised Chloé I wouldn’t abandon Constance before she was ready. Our daughter is…” I shook my head. “I’m sorry. Is my presence going to be a problem? I’m by no means planning to overstep. Dr. McCaine seemed adamant to have me on staff, and—”

“It’s fine. Decisions have obviously been made without my knowledge.” The man returned the music to the rack and glanced about, his cheeks flush with what I could only read to be undisguised hurt. “I suppose we should start with a quick tour.”

“As you wish.”

I sensed displeasure as he led me down a short hallway with doors on either side. He opened the first, flicked on a light, and held it wide so I could peer inside. “We have four practice rooms. Thankfully, they’re far more soundproof than the main room.”

The moderately sized area contained several empty music stands shoved haphazardly in a corner, another Steinway, in rougher shape than the one I’d played, and a wall of shelving where several percussion instruments gathered dust: drumsticks, crooked stacks of rubber practice pads, triangles, broken castanets, tambourines, spare cymbals, a glockenspiel, a variety of bells, and maracas of various size.

“Budget cuts. We make do,” he explained, reading my mind.

The back room housed Timber Creek Music Department’s selection of wind instruments. It was hard not to respect the orderly arrangement of the hard black cases sitting in neat rows. Flutes, clarinets, and oboes occupied the top shelf. Trumpets, saxophones, French horns, trombones, and so forth in the middle. Tubas and baritones took up much of the bottom shelf.

The stringed instruments, Mr. Edwidge explained, were inconveniently located in a storage room next to the gymnasium. “We don’t have enough space back here. Most kids have their own instruments, but part of my curriculum is training them on several, hence the abundance of supplies. Ideally, before they graduate, I aim to have them adept at playing at least three.”

Constance expertly played four, but I smartly kept that fact to myself.

Most of the instruments were Yamahas, an inexpensive standard typically purchased for beginners, but they worked for the school’s purpose.

“In here,”—Mr. Edwidge opened a door in a dark corner of the back room—“is our musical library.” He flicked a switch. The tired overhead fluorescent illuminated a dusty enclosure. “It’s stuffy and in dire need of organization, but I haven’t found the time. It would be a massive undertaking. Perhaps during the summer months. We’ll see. I assure you, I’m usually more organized.”

The room was similar in size to the practice rooms but far less spacious, considering its sheer volume of sheet music. Built-in wooden shelves climbed to the ceiling on three sides, every square inch filled with files, bursting at the seams with compositions: orchestral scores, duets, solos, piano concertos, and more. Layer upon layer upon layer of partitura. It was both a dream and a nightmare. The floor space was filled with knee-high stacks, leaving a maze of paths, enough to access nearly every shelf if one was careful where they stepped.

“The room isn’t big enough,” I mused. It was the first I’d spoken since the tour began when I’d discovered my unwanted presence at the academy.

The man tucked a flyaway piece of hair behind his ear as he followed my gaze. “No, but there’s nowhere else.”

I squeezed past him, doing my best to ignore his aromatic, woodsy scent, but it snuck up my nostrils regardless, impeding the reasoning center of my brain, conjuring visions and long-buried desires. I couldn’t tell if it was a special type of cologne or if the forest and fresh air had permeated his skin.

Either way, I liked it more than I should have.

“You’ll find everything in here, from the popular to the obscure. It was alphabetical by composer, but any number of students have tampered with my system, so I make no promises. Let me know if we don’t have something you’re looking for. I can explore the budget and possibly purchase what you need, or I have connections at other schools who will often let us borrow from their libraries.”

His words barely registered as I scanned the shelves, reading the colorful tabs, tugging loose files containing the work of composers I’d not thought about for decades. “Astounding. You have an impressive collection. I should enjoy exploring your catalog, Mr. Edwidge.”

“You can call me Niles… since we’re to work together.”

“Niles it is. You can call me August. I’m not one for titles.”

I met his pensive gaze with a smile but didn’t get one in return. With his arms crossed defensively, his offer seemed officious. Forced politeness that wasn’t felt. The size of the room seemed to shrink, and I had the sudden urge to escape its confining walls, but Niles blocked the only door.

“I’d like to examine your curriculum to assess what might be lacking and focus my tutelage on those areas.”

“Lacking. Right.” Niles checked his watch. “I have less than twenty minutes before my first class begins. Let’s go further explore my weaknesses, shall we?”

Be it the slight language barrier—sarcasm outside my native tongue wasn’t always immediately clear—or my sheer obtuseness, but the meaning behind Niles’s words took a beat too long to register.

Before I could open my mouth to respond or apologize for misspeaking, he walked away, leaving me alone in the dusty disorder of Timber Creek’s music library. I had the distinct feeling I’d landed in yet another prison with a warden who hated me on sight.