Snow pressed against the tall windows of the Westbridge Conservatory of Music like a quiet audience that had forgotten how to clap. Inside the main lobby, the afternoon light was the color of old brass, and the air smelled faintly of polished wood, wool coats, and the sharp sweetness of lemon oil. A Christmas wreath hung above the reception desk, its red ribbon already worn at the edges by a winter that had arrived early and stayed late. Parents spoke in low voices near the registration table. Children in recital clothes sat with their knees together, staring at sheet music as if the notes might rearrange themselves into mercy.
Jack stood a little apart from all of that.
He was about eleven, freckled across the bridge of his nose, with sandy-blond hair that refused to lie flat no matter how many times his grandmother had wet her palm and pressed it down that morning. He wore a forest-green sweater that had been washed one too many times and a navy backpack that looked as if it had traveled farther than a child of his age ought to have traveled. He was not tall for his age. He was not dressed for the kind of place that hung oil portraits of deceased directors above the staircase. But he had walked through the heavy oak doors without hesitation, and he had walked, as if drawn by a private gravity, toward the black grand piano that occupied the far side of the lobby like a sleeping animal.
His hand hovered near the fallboard.
"Careful, son. That piano isn't part of the waiting area."
Jack turned. Principal Harrison stood three paces away in a charcoal suit and a deep green tie that matched, almost accidentally, the boy's sweater. At fifty-eight, Harrison carried silver hair with the kind of precision that suggested a man who believed disorder belonged outdoors. His voice was not unkind. It was the voice of a man who had spent decades protecting rooms from the wrong kind of curiosity.
"I know, sir," Jack said.
"Good. I'd hate to have someone mistake curiosity for an audition."