The rehearsal room
Lila found the yard's public number online and called it herself. Dev answered from the yard and sent Iris Lila's number. Iris was still inland, in a guest room near Julian's house. She called back while folding the map she had used to find it. Lila said she would be in the school rehearsal room until five. “I don't want Dad to bring you,” she added. Iris agreed and wrote down the school's name.
The school smelled of floor polish and raincoats. Iris followed a violin phrase along a corridor past closed classrooms. She paused outside the open rehearsal room. Lila was alone at a music stand, playing a fast passage slowly enough to hear each note. At the end she lowered the bow and swore softly. Iris tapped on the doorframe.
“You can swear in front of me,” she said.
“Good, because that one earned it.” Lila put the violin down. She wore a bright green sweater with one sleeve pushed up farther than the other. “I wasn't sure you'd come.”
“I drove half a day to your house yesterday. A school corridor seemed manageable.”
Lila smiled despite herself. “The town has bad parking.”
“The yard has worse.”
They sat on two chairs facing different directions. Lila turned hers so she could see Iris without sitting like a person waiting to be examined. “I wanted to ask you things when you were at the door. Then he started explaining a man with his face, and every question sounded stupid.”
“Some of mine still do.”
“Did your father play music?”
“He whistled like a kettle that needed repair.” Iris could hear him in the shed, trying to pull a tune from a radio while he worked. “He knew he was bad. He thought that made it funnier.”
“Mine records things. He can tell which room a sound was made in if there's enough of the wall in it.” Lila rubbed the edge of the music stand. “He promised to record my solo. He wasn't there. I know where he was now, and I don't know if that makes it better or worse.”
“You don't have to choose today.” Iris leaned forward to look at Lila's marked page. “Was that the part you changed?”
“After it.” Lila took up the violin. “This part sounded too neat at rehearsal, so I held the note and made the next line start late. Nina thought I'd forgotten where I was.”
“Did you?”
“For half a beat.” She played it for Iris. The music climbed, held, then dropped into a phrase that seemed almost spoken. The room was empty enough that the last note remained after Lila had stopped. Iris did not know what to say about it. She had made wood fit water; she could tell when a line was doing something it had not done before. Lila watched her, waiting for a reaction she could use.
“You made me expect the old turn,” Iris said, “and then it went somewhere else.”
“That's what I wanted.” Lila put the violin away with more care than she had used on herself. “Dad noticed it on the video. I was glad and I was angry that he knew.”
“Both are allowed.”
“You sound like a teacher.”
“Sorry.”
“Nina is a teacher. I know the tone.” Lila looked at Iris's hands. A dark line from the yard ran under one thumbnail. “Did he teach you all of that?”
“Some. Dev taught me how to make him admit when he was wrong.”
“Did it work?”
“Sometimes.” Iris saw that Lila was asking about a man whose face matched her father but whose life did not. She did not want to give Lila a saint. “He was kind. He also promised my work to someone without asking me. We argued before he died.”
Lila picked at the sweater cuff. “My father says he didn't know about you.”
“That's true about meeting me.” Iris let the narrower truth sit for a moment. “There's more about why he left. I think he should tell you himself.”
“You could just tell me.”
“I could.” Iris had wanted to punish Julian yesterday for keeping Lila apart. She would not make Lila carry a sentence delivered to hurt him. “I won't make his answer for him. Ask him and don't let him talk around it.”
Lila looked annoyed and impressed at once. “You really are blunt.”
“My mother would say I still took too long.”
They left together because Lila had been asked to buy noodles for dinner and Iris needed something she could eat in the guest room where she was staying. At the small grocery, Lila knew the cashier and argued about whether the store's oranges were fit to sell. Iris found herself laughing while Lila pressed one orange to her nose like a false beak. The cashier told them to buy it or put it back. Lila put it back with great care, then chose one twice as bruised.
Near the back of the store Lila stopped by a rack of batteries. “He used to bring these home because one of his recorders ate them,” she said. “I had a fever when I was little and couldn't sleep. He sat by the window trying to catch the sound of a bird outside. I thought the bird was coming into the room. He played it back until I believed it wasn't.”
Iris took a carton of noodles from the shelf. She had not asked for a story about Julian being kind. She could feel Lila waiting to see if she would reject it. “My father once rebuilt a little step so I could climb onto a boat without him lifting me. I was furious he didn't just pick me up.”
“Did you use it?”
“Every day. I complained about it for weeks.”
Lila put the batteries back. “I wasn't trying to make him sound good enough.”
“I know.” Iris chose another carton because the first had a torn corner. “What happened to the bird?”
“It flew off while he was making me listen to it.”
Iris put the torn carton back. “That sounds right.”
“I don't need you to say he's terrible.”
The cashier called that he was closing in ten minutes. They went to pay, relieved to have someone else's timetable for a moment.
Outside, Lila handed Iris the better of two oranges. “Are we sisters?” she asked, almost as if she meant to ask whether the fruit was ripe.
“I don't know what word fits.”
“Good. I was afraid you'd say something perfect.” Lila tucked the noodles under her arm. “Nina's coming to get me. You don't have to wait.”
Iris waited anyway until Nina's car turned the corner. Nina lowered the window and thanked Iris for coming. Iris could not tell what else Nina felt; she had enough to do without guessing. Lila lifted her orange in farewell. They had not promised to meet again. Iris walked back toward her car with one in her pocket, its cold weight against the folded address Julian had given her.