He did not play the voicemail that night. He did not need to. The soft part had come with him into Chamber B and back out again.
Of his father he thought less often, not out of melodrama but out of practical budgeting of pain. The man had taught him, briefly, how to find a chord that felt like dusk. Then he had gone to chase gigs and call himself free. Jack had decided, around age nine, that freedom which required disappearing from a child's life was just a prettier word for exit. Still, sometimes when Jack's left hand voiced a jazz-colored passing tone without permission, he wondered if inheritance could be involuntary and incomplete at once. He did not chase the wondering far. There was stew in his stomach and a scholarship in his future and a grandmother humming in the next room.
Sleep came.
---
Principal Harrison did not sleep as easily.
He sat in his study with a glass of water he kept forgetting to drink and replayed the lobby conversation with the merciless clarity of a man trained to evaluate. Careful, son. That piano isn't part of the waiting area. Correct, as policy. Then the cascade: curiosity, audition, hope versus preparation, serious students, experiment. Each phrase had been a brick in a wall he knew how to build. Jack's replies had been simple. I know. I am auditioning. I'm not experimenting. Absolutely.
Harrison opened a drawer and found, beneath receipts and spare batteries, a yellowed program from a high school talent show he had never performed in. He had kept it for reasons he did not advertise. On the cover, a clip-art piano and the words SPRING SHOWCASE. Inside, other children's names. Not his.
Margaret appeared in the doorway in her robe. "You're doing the face."