"And?"
He told her all of it, the questions, the card, the apology, his mother's sentence about the word son. Mrs. Keene listened without the little noises people use to hurry a child toward the moral.
"I'm sorry that happened," she said. "I'm not surprised in the way I wish I could be. You did not play in order to answer him. If you had, I would have heard it, even from here. Did you answer him?"
"I told him to listen."
"Good. That's an instruction, not a defense. Remember the difference when you're older and the rooms get more expensive." She cleared her throat. "I'm proud of you. That's not a costume either."
Denise fried eggs, because celebration chicken had already been spent in March and eggs were what the evening could honestly hold. They ate. They talked about the bus to the summer program and the form that needed a physical and the fact that the keyboard's sticky G would soon be a story he could tell rather than a daily negotiation. After the dishes, Elijah sat on the floor with his back to the couch and played the prelude on the keyboard with headphones, softly, the plastic keys, the clicking pedal, the whole humble machine that had carried him to a Steinway. He did not play it for anyone. He played it because the day had been large and the piece was a place he could put his hands until his hands believed the size.
Across the city, Harper signed the letter the next morning. He did not add a postscript. His signature looked, to him, like a man standing at the back of a hall. He sealed the envelope himself. It was a small custody, and he gave it what he could.