"Did we do something wrong?"
"No."
"Did I break it?"
"No." Denise crossed the room and knelt, which cost her, and held Nia's elbows. "Listen to me. An instrument leaving a room is not the same as music leaving a person. You hear me? You keep your hands. You keep the piece. We will borrow sound where we can find it. We do not quit in a week when a truck comes."
Nia nodded because nodding was what her body knew how to do. That night she sat on the floor in the empty corner and fingered the Bach in the air until her arms ached. Denise sat on the couch and sang the bass notes, breath short, pitch still true. It was a ridiculous orchestra. It was also a promise.
The next months were a narrowing. Denise stopped the hotel. The church brought casseroles and then, as people do, grew shy around the fact that casseroles do not negotiate with tumors. June moved a cot into the living room for the weeks when someone needed to be awake. Nia learned the geography of the clinic waiting room: the fish tank with one fish missing, the magazine with the torn cover, the vending machine that stole quarters and sometimes, apologetically, gave two bags of pretzels. She did homework on a clipboard. She hummed under her breath until a man asked her to stop and June gave the man a look that ended the conversation without a second sentence.
On a good afternoon in February, Denise asked Nia to bring the kitchen chair close.
"I can't give you the harp," she said. Her voice was thinner but her eyes were not. "I can give you the order of the work. You don't skip the slow practice because you're sad. Sad is not a tempo marking. You don't play only the easy bars to feel better. You play the bar that scares you, slowly, until it gets bored of scaring you. You find somebody with an instrument and you make yourself useful so they let you near it. Sweep. Stack chairs. Be early. Be the child they don't have to worry about, and then play like you are not asking permission to exist. Those are different things. Do you understand they're different?"
"Yes."