Work Text:
Jennifer asked on a Saturday when the house was occupied but the kitchen belonged to no one else.
April had taken a dark wool coat into the front room, where the stronger light from the window helped her see the old stitching beneath the lining. Brandon was in the narrow room beyond, repairing a drawer whose runners had worn unevenly. His plane moved against the wood in short measured strokes, followed now and then by the scrape of the drawer being tested inside its frame.
The sounds travelled through the house without entering the kitchen fully. They made privacy possible without making the room secret.
Cindy had finished her schoolwork at home. She arrived carrying only a small notebook, two sharpened pencils and the cloth packet Eun-jung had sent with pieces of sweetened chestnut for April and Brandon. Her coat smelled faintly of the cold outside. October had turned sharp after several mild weeks, and bare patches had begun appearing among the yellow leaves along the lane.
Bart greeted her at the gate with an old length of rope in his mouth.
He had found it near the shed and worried one end into loose strands. When Cindy entered, he pressed the damp knot against her glove and backed away with the rest of the rope dragging beneath his chest.
“That shouldn’t be yours.”
Bart lowered his front legs and tightened his jaw.
Jennifer came from the porch. “Papa gave it to him.”
“All of it?”
“The good part was cut away.”
Bart pulled his head sideways, inviting Cindy to take hold.
She declined and walked toward the house.
He followed, striking the rope against the backs of her shoes.
Nicola waited near the steps. She smelled Cindy’s coat, pressed briefly against one shin and then returned to Jennifer’s side. Her winter coat had begun thickening, making the grey fur around her neck fuller than it had been through summer.
Jennifer held the kitchen door.
Cindy entered first and placed the food packet on the table.
The guitar case stood against the wall.
It remained plainly homemade. April had found a length of heavy brown cloth from an old furniture cover, and Brandon had helped shape the stiffening Cindy brought from school around the guitar’s outline. The edges had been reinforced with narrow leather strips saved from a worn satchel. Two cloth hinges joined the halves. The inside was lined unevenly with flannel, thicker around the repaired part of the guitar’s body and beneath the neck.
The case couldn’t be mistaken for anything bought in a shop.
One side bowed slightly when it stood upright. The handle had been remade after its first stitching pulled loose. A dark patch covered the place where Bart had managed to mouth one corner before the outer cloth was finished.
It held the guitar securely.
Jennifer looked toward it after closing the door.
Cindy removed her gloves. “Are we walking first?”
“Later.”
Jennifer didn’t move immediately from the door.
Bart came inside behind them and carried his rope beneath the table. Nicola settled near the stove, where a low fire had been lit against the afternoon chill.
Cindy watched Jennifer’s hands.
The girl had folded them loosely near her waist, though one thumb rubbed along the side of the other. She wore a pale blouse beneath a dark cardigan. The cardigan’s lowest button remained undone, perhaps because she had fastened it without looking.
“I want you to listen to something,” Jennifer said.
Cindy glanced toward the guitar case. “A new part?”
“Three things.”
“Three fragments?”
“Songs.”
Cindy looked at her fully.
Jennifer’s thumb stopped moving. “I finished them.”
“All three?”
“I think so.”
The answer carried enough uncertainty that Cindy didn’t congratulate her.
“Have April and Brandon heard them?”
“Parts.”
“All together?”
“No.”
Jennifer looked toward the front room. April’s scissors opened and closed through cloth. Brandon tested the drawer again in its runners.
“I haven’t played all three for anybody at once.”
Cindy placed her notebook on the table.
“Do you want me to write?”
“Only if you hear something.”
“I’ll hear something.”
Jennifer’s face tightened slightly.
Cindy clarified, “I don’t know whether it’ll need writing.”
Jennifer nodded.
Neither girl called the afternoon important. Jennifer’s voice had already made that clear.
She crossed to the case and laid it flat on two chairs. The leather tabs at the front had been cut from different scraps and didn’t match in colour. Jennifer opened them, lifted the cloth lid and folded it back carefully.
The guitar rested inside.
Its worn finish appeared darker in the cooler light, the old scratches pale against the body. One string had been replaced since summer and shone more brightly than the others. The bridge repair remained visible. A strip of flannel had been tucked near the lower curve to prevent the instrument from shifting inside its imperfect case.
Jennifer removed it with both hands.
She placed the guitar in the lower chair near the kitchen window, then returned to close the empty case. Cindy saw several pieces of paper inside: the clean chord page she had copied, a library slip, two folded scraps covered in Jennifer’s small writing and a narrow card protecting the strings from the lid.
Jennifer left the case open.
She moved the chair slightly away from the table so the guitar’s neck wouldn’t strike its edge. Nicola rose from the stove and came to her, lying beside the chair with her front paws close to Jennifer’s left shoe.
Bart remained beneath the table with the rope.
Cindy took the chair opposite.
Her notebook rested closed on one knee. She held no pencil yet.
Jennifer adjusted the guitar against herself. She had learned to manage the instrument’s size, though it still appeared broad across her small body. Her right arm reached over the old wood. Her left hand found the neck and tested the strings one at a time.
The first was slightly flat.
She turned the peg, listened and tried again.
Cindy didn’t interrupt.
Jennifer checked all six strings. She repeated the fourth twice, uncertain whether the note had settled. The kitchen fire gave a small pop. From the other room came the sound of Brandon tapping wood lightly into place.
When the guitar was tuned as closely as Jennifer could manage, she rested her hand over the strings.
“The first is slow,” she said.
Cindy waited.
Jennifer looked down at the sound hole. “It’s about a road near the lake.”
Cindy’s notebook remained closed.
Jennifer understood the correction in that stillness. She had begun telling what she intended before allowing Cindy to hear it.
She lowered her head slightly. “I’ll play it.”
Her thumb touched the lowest string.
The opening moved through two quiet chords, then a single descending line. Jennifer played more softly than she did during ordinary practice, so softly that the first notes seemed in danger of disappearing beneath the work elsewhere in the house. After several measures, her hand settled and the guitar grew clearer.
The song began with a road at evening.
Jennifer’s voice remained high and light in speech, but singing placed it lower. The first line entered gently beneath the guitar, almost conversational, then opened on the final word into a note fuller than Cindy expected.
The road ran beside water that couldn’t be seen from it. The singer knew the lake by the smell of the air, by gulls travelling inland and by cold gathering earlier along the ditches. Houses appeared one at a time. Lamps came on behind curtains. A man carried a ladder home across one shoulder. A woman emptied wash water into dead flowers and stood watching it soak away.
Jennifer didn’t explain who walked the road.
The song stayed close to what could be seen and heard. Shoes struck the hard verge. A screen door closed. Farther off, trains moved through the dark without appearing.
Cindy listened without writing.
The melody carried some of the restraint Jennifer had learned from the unfinished Korean fragments, though she hadn’t copied either one directly. Phrases stopped before resolving fully. The guitar left spaces after certain lines, giving the kitchen enough time to hold them.
Jennifer’s first mistake came near the second verse.
Her finger touched the neighbouring string and muted it. She corrected without stopping, but her voice tightened for the next line. Cindy heard both changes and made no mark.
The song returned to the lake road at its end.
One image arrived more clearly than the rest: rain beginning beyond sight over the water, announced only by a darkness spreading beneath gulls that had turned toward land.
Jennifer’s voice held the word land, then released it into the last chord.
The chord faded.
Cindy remained still.
Jennifer looked at the guitar rather than at her.
Bart had stopped chewing the rope. His head showed beneath the table, turned toward Jennifer.
Nicola remained beside the chair with her eyes half closed.
Cindy opened her notebook only after the sound had gone fully.
She wrote the number one at the top of a clean page.
Nothing beneath it.
Jennifer watched the pencil.
“You didn’t write.”
“Not during it.”
“Was there nothing?”
“I was listening.”
Jennifer’s right hand moved once over the guitar’s worn edge. “Do you want it again?”
“Not yet.”
Cindy closed the notebook halfway but kept her pencil inside the fold.
“The second?” she asked.
Jennifer nodded.
She shifted her left hand along the neck.
“This one has more words.”
Cindy gave no answer.
Jennifer drew in a breath and began.
The second song was built around a woman walking from one house to another with a covered dish held against her chest.
The first verse placed her on a winter street. Snow had been cleared from the middle of the pavement but remained deep near the fences. The woman’s boots were worn and one heel took water. She passed a church, a closed store and an automobile that failed twice before starting.
The dish contained food for a family whose father was ill.
That much came clearly.
The woman carrying it knew the family only slightly. She had heard of the illness from somebody at a shop and prepared what she could. The song followed her route and the things she thought she ought to say when she reached the door.
Jennifer’s melody was firmer than in the first song. It moved in repeated steps, each verse returning to a line about keeping the dish level.
Cindy wrote nothing during the first verse.
In the second, the woman began remembering another winter from childhood. The song moved suddenly to a farmhouse, then to a sister and a stove that smoked. A line about red wool mittens appeared once and disappeared. By the time the woman reached the sick family’s gate, Cindy wasn’t sure whether the sister belonged to the woman’s memory, to the household she was visiting or to another story Jennifer had placed inside the song.
She opened the notebook.
Jennifer saw the movement but continued.
Cindy made one short mark.
The pencil left a vertical line beside the number two.
The woman reached the door.
The final verse became simpler again. She set down the dish, knocked and discovered she had forgotten every careful sentence. The door opened. Warm air came through. The song ended on the covered dish passing from one pair of hands to another.
Jennifer let the final chord ring.
Cindy looked at the mark in her notebook.
Jennifer’s eyes went directly to it.
“That part was wrong,” she said.
“I haven’t said.”
“You wrote.”
“I marked where I stopped following.”
Jennifer’s hand remained on the strings.
“Where?”
“The farmhouse.”
“That’s her memory.”
“I thought it was.”
Jennifer waited.
Cindy turned the notebook toward herself and wrote three words beside the mark.
Whose sister?
Jennifer leaned slightly but couldn’t read from across the space.
Cindy spoke instead. “The sister with the red mittens. Was she the woman’s?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know that when the line came.”
“The verse says she remembered.”
“It says the chimney brought back winter.”
“That means she remembered.”
“It means the chimney reminded her of something. I didn’t know the girl was her sister until later.”
Jennifer looked down at the fretboard.
Cindy kept the notebook open. “The dish is clear.”
“All the way?”
“Yes.”
“The house?”
“The first one or the one she visits?”
Jennifer’s mouth tightened.
“That’s the trouble,” Cindy said. “There are too many houses close together.”
“The farmhouse is years before.”
“I know now.”
Jennifer touched the strings but didn’t play. “It’s meant to show why she went.”
“Because somebody once helped her family?”
“Yes.”
“I couldn’t hear that.”
Jennifer’s fingers left the neck.
She didn’t defend the verse further.
Cindy closed the notebook. “Play the third.”
Jennifer looked toward the front room.
April’s scissors had stopped. A low exchange passed between her and Brandon, too quiet for the girls to make out. Then the plane moved again over wood.
Jennifer reset the guitar.
The third song began before Cindy expected.
Jennifer struck a brisk pattern across the lower strings and entered with her voice on the second measure. The change in speed brought Bart fully out from beneath the table. He abandoned the rope and stood facing Jennifer, ears raised.
The song followed a boy on a bicycle delivering messages through town.
Unlike the woman with the dish, he didn’t move carefully. He cut through alleys, passed wagons on the wrong side and took corners so sharply that one pedal struck the road. His jacket was too large. One trouser cuff had been tied with string to keep it from the chain. He carried envelopes inside his shirt when rain began because the satchel’s flap wouldn’t close.
Jennifer’s playing became more confident with the quicker rhythm.
The guitar’s uneven finish and old repairs suited the piece. It gave the strummed chords a rough edge without swallowing them. Jennifer’s low singing voice moved more freely when the lines came fast. She didn’t have time to place every word delicately, and the lack of caution strengthened them.
Bart’s tail began moving.
When Jennifer struck the rhythm harder before the second verse, he barked once.
Cindy turned toward him. “No.”
Bart looked at her, then back at Jennifer.
The boy reached the railway crossing just after the gate came down. He couldn’t wait because one message had been marked urgent. He tried a side road, found it flooded and carried the bicycle through a yard while a woman shouted at him from a porch.
Cindy smiled faintly but made no mark.
Jennifer saw the movement.
Her playing accelerated.
The next section contained the most words. The boy crossed three streets, lost one envelope, found it stuck inside his sleeve and arrived at the correct house while believing he had missed it. The melody required Jennifer’s right hand to hold the same fast pattern while her left moved through two quick chord changes.
She rushed.
The first change arrived early. The second followed even sooner. Her voice chased the guitar and caught it only at the last line of the section.
Bart sprang forward.
The quickened rhythm had become something like running to him. He came to Jennifer’s knee and barked again, then attempted to put one paw against the guitar’s lower body.
Cindy stood and caught his collar.
“Down.”
Bart twisted toward the strings.
Jennifer stopped playing.
“No,” Cindy said firmly.
She drew him back from the chair.
Bart’s tail struck her skirt. He looked between the girls, excited rather than frightened.
Jennifer rested her forearm over the guitar. “I can put him outside.”
“He’ll bark at the door.”
Cindy sat again with one hand still around his collar. Bart remained beside her knee, body angled toward Jennifer.
“Continue.”
Jennifer looked at him. “He’ll pull.”
“I have him.”
She began the interrupted section again.
The first measures returned at the original pace.
Bart leaned forward. Cindy kept him close without tightening enough to make the restraint a game.
Jennifer reached the crowded lines.
She rushed them again.
Cindy’s pencil moved.
She drew a second mark beside the number three.
Jennifer continued through the final verse.
The bicycle boy delivered the message. The recipient opened it, read only the first line and ran into the street without coat or hat. The boy didn’t know what the letter said. He remained outside the gate with his bicycle and asked whether a reply was needed.
The answer came from somewhere inside the house.
No reply.
Jennifer repeated the phrase within the final rhythm, slower each time until the guitar stopped on a low chord.
Bart strained once toward her as the sound ended.
Cindy kept hold until his body settled.
Nicola had raised her head during the fast song. She now looked at Bart with mild disapproval, then rested her chin against Jennifer’s shoe.
Jennifer’s breathing was quicker.
She placed her right hand flat over the strings and waited.
Cindy released Bart only when he sat.
He returned to the rope beneath the table, though he remained watchful.
The three songs occupied the kitchen differently after they had ended. The first left the lake road and the unseen rain. The second left the covered dish, but its houses and winters crowded one another. The third left movement, bicycle wheels and the line no reply repeated into stillness.
Jennifer didn’t ask which Cindy liked.
She sat with the guitar across her lap and looked at the open notebook.
Cindy turned to a clean page.
“What do you remember from the first?” Jennifer asked.
“The rain over the lake.”
“There are other things.”
“I know.”
“The ladder?”
“I remember a man carrying one.”
“The wash water?”
“Yes.”
Jennifer waited for more.
Cindy wrote:
Rain beyond sight. Gulls turning landward.
She held the page where Jennifer could see.
“That’s the strongest part,” she said.
“It’s near the end.”
“Yes.”
“I thought the road was the centre.”
“The road holds it together.”
“But you remember the rain.”
“Yes.”
Jennifer looked toward the window.
The day outside remained dry. Leaves moved along the yard in short scraping circles.
“What about the first line?”
Cindy recalled it as closely as she could. The road going grey before the lamps came on.
“It’s good,” she said.
Jennifer’s eyes returned to her.
Cindy understood that good wasn’t enough.
“It tells me evening. It doesn’t stay after.”
Jennifer nodded slowly.
“The rain stays.”
Jennifer touched one string. “Because it hasn’t reached the road?”
“Maybe.”
“What does it mean to you?”
Cindy closed the notebook slightly. “I don’t know.”
Jennifer looked disappointed.
Cindy added, “That’s why it stays. I can see it without knowing what you wanted.”
Jennifer’s fingers relaxed.
She didn’t explain the image.
Cindy moved to the second song.
“The covered dish stays.”
“Not the woman?”
“The dish more.”
“She’s carrying it.”
“Yes.”
“What line did you mark?”
Cindy showed her the vertical line and the question.
Jennifer read whose sister.
“It is her sister.”
“I believe you.”
“The stove smoked because the chimney was damaged. That’s why she notices the chimney at the other house.”
“I didn’t hear that.”
“It says the smoke came down.”
“That could happen at the house she’s passing.”
Jennifer turned the guitar pick between her fingers. She had cut it from a piece of stiff celluloid, rounding the edges by rubbing them against fine sandpaper.
“I could say when I was ten,” she suggested.
“That sounds put in for explanation.”
“She has to remember sometime.”
“She can remember after the door.”
“That’s too late.”
“Then make the farmhouse shorter.”
Jennifer frowned. “The sister matters.”
“Then the song may be about the sister too.”
“It isn’t.”
Cindy waited.
Jennifer looked again at the notebook.
Cindy didn’t press the point. “The line about the mittens sounds finished.”
“It took a long time.”
“I can hear that.”
“Is that bad?”
“It sounds like it came from another song.”
Jennifer’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Why?”
“The rest is plain. She walks, the snow gets into her shoe, she holds the dish level. Then the mittens are scarlet against a white fence and the whole line opens wider.”
Jennifer remembered the exact place.
“It’s the best line in that verse.”
“Yes.”
“Then why remove it?”
“I didn’t say remove it.”
“You said it belongs somewhere else.”
“It may.”
Jennifer played the melody beneath the line without singing.
The chord changed there, opening from the repeated narrow pattern into a fuller shape before returning.
Cindy listened.
“That’s why.”
“The chord?”
“The song becomes larger for one line.”
Jennifer played it again.
She sang the words softly.
The image was polished. Scarlet mittens held above a white fence while smoke turned beneath a low winter sky. It could be seen at once. It also carried more colour and finish than anything around it.
Jennifer stopped.
Cindy said, “The rain line in the first song grows from the road. The mittens arrive.”
Jennifer looked down at the guitar body.
She didn’t cross out the line yet.
“What about the third?” she asked.
“It should be last.”
“Why?”
“It’s faster.”
“That isn’t enough.”
“Your hands were steadier.”
“I rushed.”
“Only one part.”
“I missed both changes.”
“Before that you played better than in the first two.”
Jennifer looked doubtful.
Cindy turned back through her notebook. “The first song, your second verse had a dead string.”
“I heard it.”
“The second, you watched the words more than your hand.”
“Yes.”
“The third, you stopped watching until the bicycle reached the crossing.”
Jennifer thought back.
Her posture altered slightly as she recognised it. “I knew the pattern better.”
“You were less afraid by then.”
Jennifer glanced toward the front room.
Cindy kept her voice low. “If you play all three, the fast one comes last.”
“Why not first so my hands settle?”
“They aren’t settled first.”
“I could warm them before.”
“That isn’t the same.”
Jennifer looked at her. “How?”
Cindy tried to name what she had heard.
“In the first one, you were listening to whether I was listening.”
Jennifer’s cheeks coloured faintly.
“In the second, you watched the place I wrote.”
“Yes.”
“In the third, Bart barked and you still kept the song going.”
“Until he touched the guitar.”
“Yes.”
Cindy wrote:
1. Lake road
2. Covered dish
3. Bicycle
Jennifer read the order.
The songs had titles on Jennifer’s papers, but Cindy used the objects she remembered rather than the names Jennifer had given them.
“What if the second stays confused?” Jennifer asked.
“Then fix it.”
“And if it can’t?”
Cindy looked at the list. “Then two songs.”
Jennifer’s hand stopped over the strings.
The plainness of the answer struck harder than praise or reassurance might have done.
Cindy didn’t soften it. “You asked me to listen to three.”
Jennifer nodded.
She set the pick on her knee.
“Show me where it breaks.”
Cindy opened to the page for the second song.
Jennifer played the first verse again.
Without the need to begin a full sequence, her hands settled sooner. The woman crossed the winter street. The dish remained level. One boot took water. The chords repeated beneath her steps.
At the beginning of the second verse, Jennifer sang the chimney line.
Cindy lifted one finger.
“There.”
“That early?”
“Yes.”
“The memory hasn’t even begun.”
“That’s why.”
Jennifer played the line again.
She had written:
At Dwyer’s roof the smoke turned down,
and brought the old place through the town.
Cindy listened.
“It rhymes too neatly.”
Jennifer looked at her.
“Roof doesn’t rhyme with town.”
“The lines around it do.”
“That’s what I mean. It sounds made to begin a part.”
“It does begin a part.”
“But I don’t know where it takes me.”
Jennifer retrieved the lyric sheet from the open guitar case.
Her handwriting crowded the paper. Words had been inserted between lines and connected by narrow marks. Whole phrases had been crossed out so darkly that the pencil had nearly cut through.
She found the verse.
After the chimney came the farmhouse, the smoking stove, the sister at the fence, the scarlet mittens and a winter when food had arrived from another household. The memory required twelve lines before returning to the woman on the street.
Jennifer read silently.
“It’s too long,” she said.
Cindy didn’t agree immediately. “It’s long enough to become another place.”
“That’s worse.”
“Yes.”
Jennifer took the pencil Cindy offered.
She crossed out two lines describing the farmhouse gate.
Cindy watched.
“That doesn’t change the sister.”
“No.”
Jennifer crossed out the damaged chimney.
“The smoke started it.”
“I can start with the mittens.”
“Then they’ll arrive even more.”
Jennifer stopped.
Cindy looked toward the first verse. “Why does she carry food?”
“Because the father’s sick.”
“Why does she care?”
“Because her family needed help once.”
“Does she have to remember all of it while she walks?”
Jennifer rested the pencil against the paper. “How else will anybody know?”
“She could tell the woman at the door.”
“That would sound like she wants thanks.”
Cindy considered this.
Jennifer was right. The carrier had prepared words for the doorway and then forgotten them. Explaining her own past there would alter the modest act into a declaration of motive.
“What if the sister is the one who told her to go?” Cindy asked.
“She’s grown?”
“Yes.”
Jennifer looked at the lyrics.
“The sister doesn’t live near her.”
“Then a letter.”
“That’s too much.”
“A remembered sentence.”
Jennifer shook her head. “Then I still have to explain who she is.”
Cindy looked at the line about the dish passing from one pair of hands to another.
“What if you don’t?”
“Don’t what?”
“Explain why she went.”
Jennifer frowned. “Then she’s only carrying food.”
“Yes.”
“That isn’t enough for a song.”
Cindy looked at her. “It was enough to remember.”
Jennifer’s eyes moved to the guitar.
The covered dish had remained after one hearing. The reason had not.
She read the verse again and drew one long line through the farmhouse section.
The scarlet mittens remained uncrossed.
Cindy noticed.
Jennifer read the first verse aloud under her breath, then the final one. Without the memory, the song moved directly from the snowy walk to the doorway.
“It’s too short.”
“You can add what she sees.”
“I already did.”
“Then add nothing.”
Jennifer looked up.
“A short song isn’t unfinished because it’s short,” Cindy said.
Jennifer held the lyric sheet over the guitar.
She began again from the opening.
The first verse remained.
For the second, she moved directly to the sick family’s street. She removed one description of the automobile starting and used only the sound of its failed engine behind her. The woman reached the gate sooner.
At the doorway, Jennifer hesitated where the removed verse had formerly returned to the melody.
She played the chord once.
Then again.
The gap exposed a rough place in the transition.
Cindy waited.
Jennifer repeated the preceding line and removed three words.
The melody moved more cleanly.
“What did you take out?” Cindy asked.
“Cold as iron.”
“The latch?”
“Yes.”
“It’s already winter.”
“I know.”
Jennifer crossed the words from the sheet.
She tried the passage again.
The woman set down the dish.
She knocked.
The prepared sentences disappeared.
The door opened.
Warm air came through.
The dish changed hands.
The shorter song ended.
Cindy had written nothing during the revision.
Jennifer looked at her. “Can you follow it?”
“Yes.”
“Is it too plain?”
“No.”
“Do you still need to know why she went?”
Cindy thought about the woman leaving her own house with food for people she scarcely knew.
“No.”
Jennifer looked toward the crossed verse.
“The mittens don’t fit anywhere now.”
“Not there.”
Jennifer folded the paper so the remaining line wasn’t hidden beneath the crossings. She didn’t destroy it. She placed it apart from the shortened song.
Bart emerged again as Jennifer prepared the third.
Cindy closed her hand around his collar before the first quick pattern began.
“He may be better this time.”
“He may be worse because he knows it.”
Bart looked toward Jennifer expectantly.
She played the crowded section alone.
Without the preceding verses, she rushed immediately.
Cindy shook her head. “Again.”
Jennifer slowed.
The chords landed, but the words lost their urgency.
“That’s too careful,” Cindy said.
“I can’t do both.”
“Not yet.”
Jennifer tried again.
Her right hand established the rhythm first. She entered with the words after two measures, allowing the guitar to carry the pace rather than forcing the whole section forward with her voice.
The bicycle crossed three streets.
The envelope disappeared into the sleeve.
The correct house arrived.
Jennifer completed both chord changes.
Cindy kept her hand on Bart, but the dog only leaned.
“That was right,” she said.
Jennifer looked toward her. “Smooth?”
“No.”
Jennifer’s expression fell.
“It was the right speed,” Cindy clarified. “You didn’t run ahead of your hand.”
“Was the second change late?”
“A little.”
Jennifer played only the transition.
Again.
Again.
Bart’s tail struck Cindy’s chair in time with the rhythm.
On the fourth attempt, Jennifer’s fingers arrived together.
Cindy nodded.
Jennifer played the whole crowded section.
The first change held. The second buzzed but didn’t break. Her voice remained ahead enough to keep the boy’s movement urgent without fleeing the guitar.
When she finished, she exhaled and lowered her hand.
“Again?” she asked.
“No.”
“I can do it better.”
“You may do it worse.”
Jennifer looked at the strings.
Cindy released Bart.
He sprang toward Jennifer, but she caught him before his paws reached the guitar.
“You heard it already,” she told him.
Bart pressed his head beneath her forearm.
Nicola rose beside the chair and smelled his ear, then looked away.
Jennifer set the guitar on the table while keeping one hand around Bart’s collar. Cindy helped guide him back before he could investigate the lyric sheets.
The afternoon light had shifted toward evening.
April entered the kitchen carrying the repaired coat over both arms. She saw the guitar, the open notebook, the crossed lyric pages and Bart being held between the girls.
“How did it go?”
Jennifer looked at Cindy.
Cindy closed her notebook. “There are three.”
April waited for more.
“The second is shorter now,” Jennifer said.
“Was it too long?”
“It had another song in the middle.”
April looked from her daughter to Cindy.
Cindy didn’t smile.
April accepted the description. “Your father has the drawer working.”
From the next room came the sound of Brandon opening and closing it once, apparently for proof.
Jennifer released Bart.
He went to investigate.
“Not in there,” April called.
Brandon caught him before he crossed the doorway.
The household sounds returned around the girls.
Jennifer wrapped the guitar before placing it in the case. Though the case no longer required the old blanket for ordinary storage, she kept a folded layer beneath the body to protect the repaired lower edge. Cindy held the lid while Jennifer arranged the neck and tucked the flannel around it.
The lyric sheets went into the inner pocket.
Jennifer placed the shortened second song on top. The mittens line remained on a separate fold of paper beside it.
Cindy sat at the table and tore a clean rectangular piece from a sheet of card April kept for stiffening small parcels. She used the ruler to make the edges straight.
Jennifer looked over from the case. “What’s that?”
“The order.”
“I know the order.”
Cindy wrote carefully.
The Road Beyond the Lake
Jennifer watched.
“That’s the title,” she said.
“Yes.”
Cindy wrote the second.
The Covered Dish
Then the third.
The Errand Boy
Jennifer read the three titles.
Cindy had used Jennifer’s names rather than her own remembered objects.
“Why write it if we know?” Jennifer asked.
“You may change it.”
“Then the card won’t stop me.”
“No.”
Cindy turned it over.
On the back she wrote three brief marks:
Listen first.
Keep the middle plain.
Don’t hurry the crossing.
Jennifer leaned closer.
“The first means what?”
“Play the first without watching whether anybody likes it.”
Jennifer’s cheeks coloured again.
“The middle?”
“The second song.”
“And the crossing?”
“The fast part.”
Jennifer looked at the card for a long moment.
Cindy placed it inside the case’s inner pocket, in front of the lyric sheets but behind the clean chord diagrams where it wouldn’t rub against the guitar.
She didn’t label the order final.
Jennifer closed the case.
The bowed side needed pressure from one hand before the tabs would meet. Cindy held it while Jennifer fastened the first, then the second.
Bart returned carrying the discarded rope.
He laid it across the case.
Cindy removed it. “No.”
Jennifer lifted the case from the chairs and set it upright against the wall. Her hand remained on the handle for several seconds after it was steady.
The three songs stayed inside in their written order.
Nothing in the kitchen named what they might someday be used for. The road beyond the lake, the covered dish and the bicycle boy had only been played for one listener in a room where sewing and carpentry continued beyond the walls.
Cindy put on her coat.
Jennifer walked with her to the gate.
The dogs followed. Nicola stayed close to Jennifer. Bart carried the rope, dropping it twice and retrieving it each time before either girl could pick it up.
At the gate Cindy looked back toward the kitchen window.
The guitar case could be seen inside, standing near the wall where Brandon had once cleared a place beyond Bart’s reach.
“The fast one last,” she said.
Jennifer rested one hand on the gate latch. “I know.”
“You asked.”
“Yes.”
Cindy looked at her.
Jennifer added, “It goes last.”
Cindy nodded.
She opened the gate.
Bart attempted to follow. Jennifer caught his rope and used it to turn him without pulling his collar.
Cindy stepped onto the road.
“The mittens line isn’t lost,” she said.
Jennifer looked toward the house. “It isn’t in a song.”
“Not now.”
Jennifer accepted that.
Cindy started home.
Jennifer remained at the gate with Nicola beside one leg and Bart holding the other end of the rope between his teeth.
Inside the case, the clean card rested before the songs, the order written plainly enough to be found without searching.