At home, Richard enrolled Ethan in a community service music program that sent small ensembles into nursing homes and children's hospitals. Ethan went without complaint, then with preference. In a third-floor lounge that smelled of antiseptic and peppermint candies, he played Claire's arrangement for a woman who closed her eyes and held her husband's sleeve. Afterward the woman said, "My sister had a violin. I haven't thought of her sound in years." Ethan packed his case slowly, aware that music's job was sometimes not brilliance but return.
Sophia joined the hospital visits when she could. She played brighter repertoire; he played the inward pieces; together they learned how to read a room that could not clap loudly. Once a child asked to touch the scratched case, and Ethan let him trace the scars as if they were Braille for endurance.
"Did you fall?" the child asked.
"It lived a long life before me," Ethan said. "I'm just the next chapter."
Richard drove them home from those visits quieter than usual, as if the car itself needed to metabolize what they had seen. One night he said, "I used to think philanthropy was checks. Watching you two play for free messed up my categories."
"Good," Sophia said from the back seat, then immediately, "Sorry, Mr. Mercer."
"Don't be sorry," Richard Alan Mercer said. "Be right."