Nia couldn't answer. Outside the window, a late train passed under the dark tracks, its windows bright with strangers going somewhere. On the table lay the little cedar box, heavier now than any of them had expected.
CHAPTER 04
North Bridge Strings
North Bridge Strings occupied the ground floor of a narrow building between a tire shop and a secondhand bookstore. Its window contained three violins, a potted fern, and a handwritten sign promising honest repairs. The bell above the door rang with a cracked, apologetic note when Nia entered with Dr. Shen the next afternoon.
A man with a white beard looked up from a cello bridge. His glasses hung low on his nose. Behind him a wall of instrument cases rose toward the ceiling like a congregation wearing black coats.
"I'm looking for Dorian Price," Nia said.
"Depends who wants him."
"Lena Wu mentioned your name."
He went still. Slowly he set down the tool in his hand. "Lena is dead."
"Two years ago," Nia replied. "She left me something with your name on it."
Dorian looked at Dr. Shen, then at the worn canvas bag under Nia's arm. He asked them to turn the sign in the window to CLOSED and led them into a back room where a kettle rattled beside stacks of instrument catalogues.
"I knew Lin Yue," he said before Nia could begin. "We called her Lena after she started teaching at Harbor House. She hated people who made her name sound like a riddle."
Dr. Shen smiled sadly. "That hasn't changed."
Nia showed him the photograph. Dorian pointed out the children by their instruments: a boy who became a city bus driver, a girl who taught chemistry, twins who moved to Milwaukee, and a young cellist in the front row who eventually became a choir director. In the last row stood Lena, younger and severe, beside a bespectacled man Dorian identified as Arthur Sloane.
"He came to listen," Dorian said. "Arthur was accomplished and generous in public. He helped us rent decent microphones when the festival offered no support."
"And afterward?" Dr. Shen asked.
Dorian folded the photograph face down. "Afterward his publishing company declared the suite an arrangement of his private compositions. Some parts were his. The opening movement wasn't. The children's harmonies weren't. Lena wrote the melodic spine. She tried to challenge the credit. But our copies disappeared, and somebody produced a paper saying the arrangement was a work for hire."
"Did she sign?" Nia asked.
"She signed for rehearsal wages. The document they showed us wasn't the one we remembered." He raised one finger. "That's memory, not proof. Don't tell a reporter I said otherwise."
Nia appreciated the warning. The internet had been willing to turn her into a stranger's theory overnight. She wanted names and dates she could test, not another dramatic accusation.
Dorian showed her a page from his own repair ledger. It listed **L. Wu, two bows and a violin bridge, March 1999**. On the next line Arthur Sloane had approved rental of a rehearsal room. In the margin a note said, *Four voices before the bridge.*
He turned several more pages, revealing a history of the neighborhood through damaged instruments: repairs paid for in installments, a violin returned without charge after a family's apartment fire, a cello adjusted so a child with unusually small hands could play without pain. Nia asked why he had kept so much paperwork. Dorian shrugged. "Because memory makes terrible promises. A ledger can be wrong, too, but at least you can check it." He demonstrated how a bridge changed the pressure of strings on wood. An instrument, he said, could survive a careless repair and still sound wrong for years. "People applaud the performance and don't realize what they aren't hearing." Nia glanced at the old festival program on the wall. She was beginning to recognize a pattern: the more prestigious the music became, the fewer people were named in its making. Dorian would not allow her to confuse a pattern with proof. He made her write down which documents were originals and which were copies before she left.
"Why four?" Nia asked.
"It was Lena's favorite lesson," Dorian said. "The ensemble began in separate lines. Violin, cello, flute, and a child's humming voice. Each was allowed to finish a phrase before the others joined. Arthur rewrote the middle section for a more polished orchestra. Not an evil act by itself. But he never restored the original voices. The published version made it sound as if one master had created everything from nothing."
A customer knocked and peered through the window, then left when he saw the sign. Dorian waited for the footsteps to fade. He brought out a small cassette player with a broken latch. "I sent Lena a copy of the rehearsal audio years ago. She asked me to transfer it, but the tape had been damaged by heat. I couldn't safely play it."
Nia took the player without touching the cassette compartment. "She kept a repair receipt. We found it in her box."
"She might have kept the original," Dorian said. "I never understood why she didn't let me finish."
Dr. Shen examined a photocopied festival program displayed above the workbench. The music credited Arthur Sloane as "principal composer" and mentioned "community collaborators" in smaller print. A handwritten correction beside the title read *Lin Yue—melody; students—variations*. No one had incorporated it into the final printing.
"This is something," Dr. Shen murmured. "Not enough. But something."
Dorian nodded toward Nia. "If you're going to pursue this, understand that Mr. Sloane won't argue about music. He'll argue about your qualifications. He'll ask why a banquet server knows more than a publisher's archive."