Harper nodded. "Yes."
"I could play," Elijah said. "That's the part people like, because it makes the insult look stupid. It was stupid either way. If I had sat down and fallen apart, it would still have been a wrong thing to say to a kid with a card you didn't bother to read. The playing isn't what made you wrong. The playing is just what I came to do."
"I know that now," Harper said. "I think I knew it by the Thursday of that week. I'm slow in the direction that matters."
Elijah looked at him and felt, not a flood of forgiveness, which would have been another costume, but a quiet placing of a weight on the correct shelf. "You apologized in front of people. My mother still mentions that, and she doesn't mention things that were only for show. You didn't put a note on the letter. Ms. Reynolds told me, years ago, that you wanted to and she told you not to. Thank you for listening to her."
"She has a talent for sentences I don't enjoy and do need."
"I'm going to play the C minor prelude," Elijah said. "Not because of you. It's on the program because Nadine Cho and I built a set around voices, and it still feels like a door. If you listen, listen to the alto. That's the part I was proud of when I was eleven. I didn't have the language yet. I had the notes."
"I'll listen," Harper said.