Work Text:
The windows stood open, though the afternoon was nearly too still for them to matter.
Heat had settled over the lane after dinner and remained there, pressing the smells of grass, warm boards and distant road dust close to the house. A fly moved against the kitchen screen with a dry, persistent tapping. Beyond it, Bart lay in the narrow strip of shade cast by the back steps, his chin flat between his paws. Nicola had chosen the cooler earth beneath the maple and scarcely moved except when one ear turned toward a bird.
Inside, Cindy sat at the table with three sheets of ruled paper before her.
The first had been written nearly to the bottom and crossed through so thoroughly that only scattered words remained legible between the pencil marks. The second contained a title, two sentences and a dark rubbed place where repeated erasing had thinned the paper. The third was clean except for Cindy’s name and the date in the upper right corner.
Her schoolbook lay open beside it.
The assignment required a composition on the movement of people from country districts into towns and cities. The class had been given facts to include: new forms of work, crowded housing, transport, public health, education and the changes brought to family life. The teacher wanted the material arranged into an opening, a middle and a conclusion rather than copied in the order it appeared in the book.
Cindy understood the facts.
She disliked the expected shape.
The textbook stated that people moved for wages and opportunity, that cities offered work unavailable on farms and that growing industries required labour. It gave neat figures, causes and consequences. It didn’t say how a family decided which belongings could cross an ocean, what names travelled well, which customs could be practised openly and which survived inside kitchens, letters and memory. None of that had been assigned. Cindy didn’t intend to insert her own household into the composition merely to make the page appear thoughtful.
Still, every opening she wrote seemed too broad.
People have always moved from one place to another.
She had crossed that out because it said almost nothing.
Cities grow when people believe they may live better there.
She had crossed that out because belief wasn’t the same as result.
Industry brings people together.
That had remained for less than a minute.
Now the third sheet waited.
Cindy rested the pencil against the page without making a mark.
Jennifer sat several feet away near the window with the guitar across her lap.
She had grown more accustomed to its size. The broad lower body no longer slid outward whenever she changed chords, and she had learned to sit near the chair’s edge with both feet planted. The repaired bridge held. The strings still stood high above the fretboard, though her fingers had hardened enough that ordinary practice no longer left them painfully red after a few minutes.
She played quietly while Cindy worked.
The exercise wasn’t a song. Jennifer moved between small groups of notes taken from a library book, striking each string separately and listening for buzzes before attempting the shape again. When a chord sounded poorly, she stopped it with the side of her hand rather than letting it fill the kitchen.
Cindy had grown used to the uneven music.
She no longer looked up at each mistake. Jennifer no longer apologized for making them. The guitar’s low notes passed beneath the scrape of Cindy’s pencil, April’s scissors in the front room and the occasional movement of a dog outside.
Jennifer changed to a different exercise.
Three notes rose, the second held longer than the others. She repeated them, shifted one finger and tried again.
Cindy read the first paragraph of the chapter for the fourth time.
The growth of factories has caused many people to leave rural districts and settle in cities where regular employment may be found.
She copied part of the sentence onto the clean sheet, stopped and drew one line through it. It remained too close to the book.
Jennifer played a low note, then one above it.
Cindy breathed through her nose.
A tune came beneath the breath.
It was hardly louder than the pencil moving across paper. The first sound remained closed behind her lips, then opened slightly on the next. Four notes formed a short downward turn, returned to the first and moved away by another path.
Cindy didn’t look up.
The melody belonged to household work. It came during washing, while rice was measured, when Eun-jung mended near the window or stood over a simmering pot without speaking. Sometimes Min-jae hummed part of it while repairing a drawer or writing a letter, though his version travelled lower and lost more notes before reaching the end.
Cindy knew no title for it that she would have trusted herself to give.
She had never seen it written.
The beginning was firm because it had been repeated often. The next movement changed depending on who carried it and what task occupied their hands. Eun-jung held one note. Min-jae shortened it. An older visitor once added a turn Cindy had tried to remember and lost before the following morning.
Cindy hummed the opening again while staring at the textbook.
Jennifer’s hand stopped above the guitar strings.
She didn’t raise her head sharply or ask Cindy to repeat herself. She waited until the next quiet phrase emerged.
Cindy wrote:
People often move when the work near home is no longer enough.
She paused.
The humming returned beneath the pause, three notes now, then a fourth falling lower than before. Cindy crossed out often and replaced it with may.
Jennifer touched one string lightly.
The note sounded beneath Cindy’s voice.
It was too high.
Jennifer let it fade without correcting herself aloud. She moved her hand down the neck and tried another.
Cindy continued humming.
The guitar entered again, this time near the pitch of her first note. Jennifer played only once, waiting through the space afterward.
Cindy reached the second sentence.
Towns may offer wages, schools and services, but they may also require families to live in unfamiliar ways.
Her pencil slowed on unfamiliar.
Jennifer found the next note.
Cindy’s humming stopped.
The guitar repeated the first part of the tune alone.
Jennifer looked at the fretboard, not at Cindy. Her fingers moved carefully through the four notes she had heard most clearly. The last was uncertain. She played it softly and allowed the strings to fall still.
Cindy remained with her pencil touching the page.
“That was mine,” she said.
Jennifer looked up.
“You were humming it.”
“I know.”
Cindy turned in her chair. “I didn’t know you were listening.”
“I wasn’t at first.”
Jennifer played the first note again.
Cindy’s eyes moved from the strings to Jennifer’s left hand.
“Is that where it starts?”
“I think so.”
“It sounded higher when Mama does it.”
Jennifer shifted up the neck and played another note.
“No.”
She returned lower.
“That one.”
Jennifer held it.
The note travelled through the old body of the guitar and faded into the warm kitchen.
Cindy hummed from the beginning deliberately now.
Without the rhythm of schoolwork beneath it, the melody became less certain. She gave the first note, moved to the second and paused as if the next ought to arrive from somewhere outside herself. Then she found it and continued through the small downward turn.
Jennifer followed after her rather than playing over her voice.
Cindy stopped after five notes.
“You changed that one before,” Jennifer said.
“Which?”
“The fourth.”
“I may have.”
“Was this right?”
Jennifer played the phrase as she remembered it.
The fourth note rose before descending to the fifth.
Cindy shook her head. “Not like that.”
She hummed it again.
This time the fourth note remained level and the fifth dropped farther.
Jennifer copied it.
Cindy listened.
“Yes.”
Jennifer repeated the phrase.
On the second repetition, Cindy’s forehead tightened.
“No.”
Jennifer stopped. “What changed?”
“The end.”
“I played the same notes.”
“The last one sounded finished.”
“It goes lower.”
“Not so much.”
Jennifer tried the final two notes again, stopping one step higher.
Cindy nodded slowly. “Nearer.”
“Does it go on?”
“Yes.”
“What comes next?”
Cindy opened her mouth and closed it.
The answer didn’t appear merely because it had been requested.
She turned toward the table and looked at the composition, though the words there no longer held her attention.
“I don’t remember from there.”
Jennifer rested her right hand across the strings.
Cindy hummed the opening again. When she reached the place beyond the fifth note, her voice moved into a small turn unlike the one before. She stopped immediately.
“That may not be it.”
Jennifer didn’t play the uncertain part. “Do the beginning.”
Cindy did.
The first five notes held.
Jennifer copied them more accurately now, finding each after Cindy rather than anticipating it. She played the phrase lower than Cindy’s voice, letting the guitar carry it beneath rather than compete.
Cindy listened.
“It’s too heavy there.”
Jennifer shifted upward.
“That’s too bright.”
She tried the same notes on different strings, keeping the pitch near the first attempt but changing where the sound came from. The melody became thinner and more restrained.
Cindy looked toward the guitar body. “That’s closer.”
Jennifer repeated it.
The last note still seemed to settle too firmly.
Cindy lifted one hand. “Don’t leave it there.”
“Where should it go?”
“It doesn’t stop.”
“I don’t know the next note.”
“Then don’t make this one sound like the end.”
Jennifer considered the problem.
She played the phrase again and shortened the final note, lifting her finger before the sound could fully settle.
Cindy listened with her head slightly turned.
“Better.”
“It sounds cut off.”
“It is.”
Jennifer looked at her.
Cindy returned the look without apology. “I don’t remember what comes after.”
Jennifer played the opening once more, leaving the last note open and unfinished.
The space following it felt different now. It didn’t ask to be filled immediately. It held the shape of something absent without pretending to know it.
Cindy turned back to the table.
The composition remained beneath her hand.
Jennifer didn’t ask where the melody came from.
She placed her fingers at the beginning and waited.
Cindy read the paragraph she had written. The second sentence troubled her less than before, though she still disliked the repetition of may. She changed the first one to can and left the second.
People can move when the work near home is no longer enough. Towns may offer wages, schools and services, but they may also require families to live in unfamiliar ways.
She stared at the word families.
A low guitar note sounded behind her.
Jennifer played the fragment once, slowly.
Cindy hummed with it.
The two didn’t align fully. Jennifer’s third note came early, and Cindy’s voice moved around it rather than stopping.
“You hurried,” Cindy said.
Jennifer tried again.
This time she waited too long between the second and third.
“It doesn’t stop there.”
“It sounded like you breathed.”
“I did, but the tune didn’t.”
Jennifer nodded.
She played without the pause.
Cindy hummed over it and continued one note farther before losing the thread.
Jennifer stopped where Cindy stopped.
“What was that?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“The new note.”
“It may be right.”
“Do it again.”
Cindy repeated the opening. At the uncertain place, she gave a different note.
Jennifer kept her hand still.
Cindy frowned. “No.”
She began again.
The third attempt returned to the first new note but approached it through a slight bend in her voice.
Jennifer found it cautiously on the guitar.
“That one?” she asked.
Cindy listened to it alone. “It sounds wrong by itself.”
“With the others?”
Jennifer played from the beginning and added the new note.
Cindy leaned back from the table.
“Maybe.”
Jennifer didn’t write anything down. She had no music paper, and the ordinary lined pages Cindy used for school would have offered little help. Instead she repeated the six-note version twice.
On the third attempt she altered the final note unconsciously, drawing it toward the nearest familiar chord.
Cindy shook her head.
“You keep trying to finish it.”
“I’m trying to remember it.”
“You don’t remember it.”
“No.”
“Then leave it.”
Jennifer removed her hand from the neck.
The correction didn’t offend her. She looked toward the open library book, then closed it so its exercises wouldn’t draw the melody toward patterns she already knew.
Cindy picked up her pencil again.
Jennifer rested the guitar across her lap and waited in the quiet.
The fly continued against the screen.
Bart rolled from one side to the other beneath the back steps. Nicola lifted her head when a cart passed on the road and lowered it again.
Cindy wrote a third sentence.
The change is not simple because a family may gain one kind of security while losing another.
She read it twice.
The word losing felt too large for the information assigned. She changed it to leaving behind.
Jennifer’s fingers returned to the guitar.
She played the opening fragment softly, keeping the last note brief.
Cindy hummed without turning.
The melody passed through the kitchen several times.
Each repetition differed slightly. Sometimes Cindy held the second note longer. Sometimes the downward turn narrowed. Once she placed a small grace between two notes that Jennifer couldn’t find quickly enough. When Jennifer tried to repeat it, the result sounded too deliberate.
“No,” Cindy said.
“I heard something there.”
“It wasn’t another note.”
“What was it?”
Cindy hummed the place again.
Her voice slid lightly from one pitch to the next, not lingering long enough to create a separate step.
Jennifer attempted the slide along one string.
The metal string gave a faint squeak beneath her finger.
Cindy’s face tightened. “That’s too much.”
Jennifer tried it with two neighbouring notes instead.
“That’s too square.”
She stopped.
Cindy looked toward her. “You don’t have to put everything in.”
“I heard it.”
“You heard my voice move.”
“Yes.”
“The guitar isn’t my voice.”
Jennifer considered that.
She played the two notes plainly and allowed the space between them to remain less expressive than Cindy’s humming.
“That’s better,” Cindy said.
“It’s less like you.”
“It isn’t supposed to become me.”
Jennifer rested her hand across the strings again.
The composition gained another paragraph while the melody waited.
Cindy wrote about public services, crowded streets and the difference between regular wages and secure work. She avoided copying the textbook’s praise too closely. When a sentence became tangled, she spoke it quietly under her breath, changed the order and wrote it again.
Jennifer listened to the tune inside those murmured words.
Now and then Cindy slipped from speech into humming without noticing. The fragment appeared in pieces, interrupted by phrases about housing and transport. Jennifer didn’t chase every occurrence. She waited for the familiar beginning and checked it against the notes beneath her fingers.
By the middle of the afternoon, she could play seven notes with some consistency.
The seventh remained doubtful.
Cindy accepted it in one repetition and rejected it in the next.
Jennifer didn’t argue that the guitar required a decision.
She shortened the fragment to the six notes both girls recognized and practised their shape in several positions. High on the fretboard, the melody sounded brittle. On the lowest strings, it became too broad and mournful. The most suitable place lay between, where the notes retained warmth without swelling beyond Cindy’s restrained humming.
Jennifer played it there.
Cindy stopped writing.
“That’s the place.”
Jennifer repeated it.
“Yes.”
The guitar’s old wood softened the attack of the notes. Its worn body held a faint roughness even when Jennifer’s fingers landed cleanly. The fragment seemed to fit that imperfection more readily than it had fit the clearer, higher position.
Jennifer looked at the fretboard so she could remember where her hand had been.
“Again,” Cindy said.
Jennifer played.
The final known note sounded and vanished quickly.
Cindy hummed into the space after it.
The continuation came only as a low uncertain breath, more direction than melody. She tried again and found no clearer shape.
“That’s all,” she said.
Jennifer didn’t answer with reassurance.
She played only the known portion.
Cindy returned to her composition.
April passed through the kitchen carrying a basket of folded cloth.
She paused at the sound of the guitar. Her eyes moved from Jennifer to Cindy and then to the paper spread across the table.
“What are you working on?” she asked.
“My composition,” Cindy said.
April looked toward Jennifer.
“She was humming,” Jennifer said.
April waited, perhaps expecting more.
Jennifer played the fragment once.
Cindy listened closely enough to catch the shortened final note.
April’s face softened at the sound, though she didn’t ask what it was. “It’s gentle.”
Cindy looked down at her paper.
Jennifer rested her hand on the guitar.
April carried the basket into the front room.
Cindy read the last sentence she had written. “It isn’t always gentle.”
Jennifer looked toward her.
“The melody?”
Cindy nodded.
“How does it go when it isn’t?”
“I don’t know. Louder isn’t the difference.”
Jennifer waited.
Cindy tried to find words for something she knew without language. “Sometimes Mama hums it while she works. Sometimes she stops in the middle. It sounds different before she stops.”
Jennifer touched the first string but didn’t play.
“Could you do that part?”
“I’d have to hear her.”
“All right.”
No request followed for Cindy to ask at home or bring back an explanation.
The afternoon moved on.
Cindy completed her second page and began the conclusion. She wrote slowly, choosing a modest final statement rather than repeating the broad claims from the textbook.
The growth of towns changes work, homes and the habits of families. These changes may create opportunity, but they should not be judged only by the number of buildings or factories that appear.
She read it silently.
Jennifer played the fragment.
The sentence about buildings remained.
Cindy added:
What people are able to keep also matters.
She looked at the line for some time.
Then she left it.
Jennifer didn’t ask whether it belonged to the melody.
The clock had passed four when footsteps sounded on the path outside.
Bart rose first.
His claws struck the back step, followed by the quick movement of his body toward the gate. Nicola stood beneath the maple and looked toward the lane.
Jennifer stopped playing.
Cindy looked at the clock. “Mama isn’t coming until five.”
The gate opened.
Bart’s tail began beating against the fence.
Cindy went to the screen.
Eun-jung stood inside the yard wearing her dark walking coat and carrying a covered basket over one arm. The heat had loosened several strands of hair near her temples. She shut the gate before Bart could press through and placed one hand briefly against his head when he approached.
Nicola came more slowly.
Eun-jung looked toward the open kitchen door.
Cindy opened the screen. “Mama?”
“I finished early.”
“I’m nearly done.”
Eun-jung reached the steps but didn’t climb immediately.
The guitar fragment had ended before she entered the yard, though its last note might still have been present in the house’s warm air. She stood with one hand on the basket handle and looked through the doorway toward Jennifer.
Jennifer held the guitar motionless across her lap.
Eun-jung’s gaze went to Cindy’s school pages, then to the instrument.
“You were playing,” she said.
Jennifer’s hand tightened slightly around the neck. “Yes, ma’am.”
“What?”
Jennifer looked toward Cindy.
Cindy remained beside the screen.
“A tune from home,” she said.
Eun-jung’s eyes moved to her daughter.
“I was humming it.”
For several seconds the only sound came from Bart’s breathing near the steps and the fly still tapping against the screen above him.
Eun-jung had heard more than the final note.
She must have paused outside the door before the dogs announced her fully. Nothing in her face disclosed how much of the fragment had reached her or what place it occupied in memory. Her gaze returned to Jennifer.
Jennifer lifted the guitar from her lap and set it carefully in the chair beside her.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Eun-jung’s expression sharpened slightly. “For what?”
Jennifer looked at the strings. “I didn’t know whether I should play it.”
“Did Cindy ask you?”
“No, ma’am. She was humming.”
“I showed her the notes,” Cindy said.
Jennifer shook her head once. “I found some of them.”
Eun-jung stepped into the kitchen.
Cindy held the screen while her mother passed. Eun-jung placed the basket on the end of the table, keeping it away from the schoolwork. She didn’t remove her coat.
Her eyes rested briefly on the guitar’s worn body.
“Play what?” she asked Cindy.
Cindy hummed the opening.
She did it quietly, with less certainty beneath her mother’s attention than she had shown at the table. The first turn remained sound. The final known note shortened almost too soon.
Eun-jung listened.
She didn’t join her daughter.
When Cindy stopped, Eun-jung placed one hand on the back of the empty chair.
“That much,” she said.
Cindy looked toward Jennifer. “That’s what we had.”
Jennifer didn’t reach for the guitar.
Eun-jung’s face remained still. She looked at the completed pages before Cindy.
“Your writing?”
“Finished.”
“Read it again at home.”
“Yes, Mama.”
Cindy began gathering her books.
Jennifer stood. “I’ll wrap the guitar.”
“You don’t need to put it away because I came,” Eun-jung said.
Jennifer looked toward her.
The older woman didn’t ask for the tune to be played again. She didn’t name it, explain where she had learned it or tell either girl that a note had been wrong. She lifted the basket and drew a covered dish from beneath the cloth.
“This is for April.”
Jennifer accepted it with both hands. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“Cold noodles. The bowl should come back.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Eun-jung looked once more toward the guitar.
Jennifer waited.
No permission was spoken, but no prohibition came either.
Cindy tied the strap around her books.
“I have to correct the clean copy tonight.”
“Your paper is clean,” Jennifer said.
“The first sentence leans.”
Jennifer looked at the line. “Only a little.”
“Mama will see it.”
Eun-jung had already seen it.
She said nothing.
Jennifer put the covered dish near the stove and returned to the table. She didn’t pick up the guitar while Cindy was preparing to leave.
Bart had come to the screen and pressed his nose against the mesh. Cindy opened the door just wide enough to step through and blocked him with one knee.
“You stay.”
He wriggled around her skirt.
Eun-jung waited on the step.
Jennifer followed as far as the doorway. “I’ll bring the bowl.”
“Next week is enough,” Eun-jung said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Cindy adjusted the schoolbooks beneath her arm. She looked past Jennifer toward the guitar resting in the chair.
“The fourth time was too quick,” she said.
Jennifer knew which repetition she meant. “I’ll slow it.”
“Not the whole thing.”
“Only the turn.”
Cindy nodded.
Eun-jung glanced between them but didn’t ask.
They left through the yard.
Bart accompanied them to the gate, carrying no stick and showing no willingness to let the visit end. Nicola walked beside Cindy until Eun-jung opened the latch, then stopped within the fence.
Jennifer remained in the doorway.
Eun-jung and Cindy went down the lane together, the mother’s pace measured and the daughter’s schoolbooks held close against her side. They spoke after reaching the road, though distance and the soft air kept their words from carrying back.
Jennifer looked toward the chair.
The guitar remained where she had placed it, strings quiet beneath the open window.
She didn’t pick it up until Cindy and Eun-jung had passed from sight.
Several days later, Cindy arrived carrying no schoolwork.
She had a folded piece of paper inside her coat pocket, though she didn’t take it out when Jennifer met her at the gate. Bart greeted her with a stick already in his mouth. Nicola pressed against her shins, then followed the girls to the back steps.
Jennifer had been practising in the yard because the house had grown close with heat. The guitar rested on a chair beneath the maple, its body protected from the ground by the old blanket. The cardboard pieces Cindy had brought from school remained indoors, still waiting for a proper case to be planned.
Cindy looked toward the instrument.
“I have another part.”
Jennifer stopped.
“From after the first?”
“No.”
Cindy sat on the step.
Jennifer brought the guitar closer but didn’t place it across her lap yet. “Where does it go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did your mother sing it?”
“She hummed while she was cutting vegetables.”
“Did you ask?”
“No.”
Jennifer waited.
Cindy removed the folded paper from her pocket.
Inside, she had written no notes. Only a line of small marks crossed the centre, some close together and others separated by longer spaces.
“What’s that?” Jennifer asked.
“The length.”
Cindy tapped the first four marks. “These are near each other. Then this one holds.”
“You wrote the tune?”
“I wrote when it moves.”
Jennifer sat beside her with the guitar.
Cindy hummed the new fragment.
It began lower than the first. The first two notes scarcely moved. Then the melody rose through a narrow interval, held and descended by a different path.
Jennifer listened without touching the strings.
Cindy repeated it.
The second version changed at the end.
“Which one?” Jennifer asked.
“The first.”
“Do it again.”
Cindy tried.
The third version changed at the beginning.
She stopped with visible annoyance. “I knew it at home.”
“You walked here.”
“I kept humming.”
“That may have changed it.”
Cindy looked at the paper marks.
Jennifer played no guessing note. “Start with the part you know.”
Cindy gave the two low opening sounds.
Jennifer found the first on the guitar.
“Lower,” Cindy said.
Jennifer moved down one position.
“Yes.”
The second note lay close enough that Jennifer first played the same pitch again.
Cindy shook her head. “It moves.”
“A little?”
“Yes.”
Jennifer found the neighbouring note.
“Too much.”
“There isn’t one between.”
“Then it isn’t straight.”
Jennifer remembered the earlier slide she had been unable to imitate. She pressed the string and altered the tension slightly with her fingertip.
The pitch bent upward.
Cindy listened. “That’s nearer.”
Jennifer tried again with less pressure.
“Yes.”
The old string gave a faint rasp beneath the movement, but the pitch rose only enough to suggest direction.
Cindy hummed the fragment over it.
Jennifer found the next two notes and stopped at the held place.
“How long?”
Cindy looked at the marks. “Longer than the others.”
Jennifer counted silently through the note.
Cindy lifted her hand when it had lasted enough.
The descending part remained uncertain.
They worked through it the same way they had worked through the first fragment. Cindy refused notes that closed too neatly. Jennifer tested lower strings and altered positions until the melody stopped sounding broad. The tune resisted the common shapes Jennifer knew from her books.
When she tried joining the final note to a chord, Cindy stopped her.
“It doesn’t have that.”
Jennifer removed the chord.
They repeated the new fragment until its beginning held steady.
Only then did Jennifer play the first fragment.
The familiar six notes sounded beneath the tree, moved through the open kitchen window and faded near the steps.
Cindy hummed the new part afterward.
There was a space between them.
Jennifer played the first fragment again and nearly moved toward the second.
Cindy heard the intention before the note arrived. “No.”
Jennifer stopped.
“They don’t meet there,” Cindy said.
“Do you know where they meet?”
“No.”
“Could this one come first?”
“I don’t know that either.”
Jennifer looked down at the strings.
Bart approached carrying the same stick. He placed it near Jennifer’s shoe and waited.
She didn’t throw it.
Cindy took the stick and sent it toward the shed. Bart ran after it.
Jennifer shifted her hand to the lower position belonging to the newer melody.
She played the second fragment by itself.
Cindy hummed with her, correcting the slight bend in the opening and the length of the held note.
When it ended, Jennifer let the guitar fall quiet.
She returned to the higher position and played the first fragment once more, not before the second and not after it as though one answered the other. It stood separately, carrying its own unfinished edge.
Cindy unfolded the paper between them.
She drew another group of marks below the first, leaving a wide blank space between the two rows.
Jennifer looked at it.
“That’s where the missing part goes?” she asked.
Cindy shook her head. “It only means we don’t know.”
The space remained.
Jennifer played the lower fragment again.
Cindy listened, then moved one of the marks a little farther from the next to show where the held note needed more room.
Neither girl drew a line between the two rows.