"He can call it generosity," Maya answered. "That doesn't mean anyone else has to call it the same thing."
That afternoon, Caleb received his audition schedule: Thursday at ten, with a choice of three prescribed works and one original arrangement. The published repertoire included a movement from *City of Lanterns*. He had been practicing it for weeks, unaware that its opening might belong to the woman who taught him to read music.
Nia told him what they'd found. He stared at the program until his eyes shone. "If I play it, am I helping him?"
"You'd be playing a piece of music," she said. "The question is whether you want to play it honestly."
He tested the opening on his keyboard. He played Arthur's published flourish, then Lena's quieter version from the notebook. Neither sounded like a complete answer. He stopped, frustrated, and said he might drop out entirely.
Evelyn joined them. "Lena never wanted fear to make the decisions in this house."
That evening Nia found Caleb still working by the kitchen light. He had placed Lena's score beside the official sheet and marked each difference in pencil. Across the top he had written a new working title: **A Room Without a Stage**.
"It's not an accusation," he said. "It's an arrangement. Both voices are there, but the first one gets to finish."
Nia listened as he played. After the last note, he observed the long rest. From the hallway Evelyn began to hum the melody Lena had taught them. For the first time since the gala, the house felt less like a place under siege than a place where something still could be made.
CHAPTER 06
The Man Who Remembered the Fourth Voice
Dorian Price had said he remembered the fourth voice. When Nia asked him what that meant, he refused to answer over the phone. Instead he invited her to breakfast at a diner beneath the elevated tracks, where he could see both exits and seemed annoyed to have developed the habit.
He brought an envelope containing five photographs. In one, a girl of thirteen stood barefoot behind the Harbor House ensemble, holding no instrument. Her head was tilted slightly back as though she were singing toward a window. In another, a paper microphone had been taped to a broom handle, and the same girl was laughing beside Lena.
"Her name was Beatrice Young," Dorian said. "Everyone called her Bea. She had a voice that could make a noisy room remember its manners."
"Where is she now?"
"I hoped you might help me find out."
Dorian explained that the original suite included four independent voices. The fourth was Bea's wordless melody, recorded live while the instrumentalists passed the theme between them. Arthur's published score turned that section into a trumpet solo. Critics praised its confidence. The children remembered Bea standing in the middle of a small basement stage, too frightened to lift her chin until Lena crouched beside her and counted in Mandarin.
"Bea wasn't Chinese," Nia said.
"No. Lena counted in whichever language the child needed to hear without being laughed at. The rehearsal was full of languages. What matters is that she listened."
According to Dorian, Bea's family moved suddenly after the festival. For a time her letters reached Harbor House, then stopped. Arthur's publishing office claimed it had secured a release from every participant. Dorian never saw one bearing Bea's name. He saw only a summary sheet signed by the ensemble manager.
Dorian unfolded a second photograph, one showing the ensemble around a battered tape machine. Lena had taped handwritten labels to the microphone stands, naming every player rather than simply listing sections. "She used to make us introduce ourselves before recording," he said. "She said the tape would outlive our haircuts and our confidence, and somebody should know who made the noise." Nia wondered whether that small ritual had survived on the cassette. She asked why the other adults hadn't insisted on the same care when the recording was published. Dorian looked embarrassed. He had been twenty-four, delighted to be near a celebrated composer and desperate for a professional credit. His own name had appeared in a thank-you paragraph, and he told himself it was enough. When he later complained about the omission of the students, the company said the program was already at the printers. "I didn't fight as hard as Lena did," he admitted. "That's part of why I kept the photo.
"If she's alive," Nia said, "she may not want a stranger digging through her childhood."
"Exactly. Find her if you can. Ask, don't expose."
They took the photographs to Maya, who found an old yearbook listing Beatrice Young at a public middle school. There was no contact information. Nia and Dr. Shen spent an afternoon checking alumni groups and obituaries, rejecting more leads than they pursued. Eventually Marisol found an undelivered postcard tucked into the back of a Harbor House folder. Bea had written from Springfield years earlier: *Miss Lena, I'm singing again. Please tell Dorian the fourth voice came back.*
Nia stared at the sentence. It was neither a legal claim nor a clue designed for a mystery novel. It was simply a young woman telling a teacher she'd survived a hard season and returned to singing.
Meanwhile Gideon's office offered a formal statement to *Cityline*. It asserted that Arthur Sloane had collaborated generously with community musicians, that all applicable rights had been handled professionally, and that "recent online speculation" was unfair to his legacy. Gideon himself appeared on morning television beside a group of smiling scholarship recipients.
"I support gifted young people regardless of where they begin," he said. "That's what last night's little misunderstanding was about."
Nia watched from Evelyn's living room. Caleb muttered that nobody had misunderstood anything. Their mother turned off the television before the anchor could ask a question that would never be answered.
A few hours later, a car followed Nia from the bus stop. It moved slowly whenever she slowed, then accelerated when she turned toward the library. She ducked inside and waited beside the return desk until it disappeared. She had no evidence that the driver worked for Gideon; the city was full of vehicles, and fear could make any coincidence resemble a warning. Still, when she reached home, she told her family what happened.
"No solo heroics," Evelyn said. "We make decisions together."