6

Later that month, I found the violin. It was very old, and in a box at the very back of the hall closet; Mariam hadn’t played it in years. Clara arranged for lessons from a neighbor.

“She goes by Lina,” Clara said, on the drive over. “She’s been playing violin all her life, in my understanding. Came here in much the same manner as you, if you get my drift.”

I glanced at her. She was ninety-two that year, but her profile was still strong. Her eyes were unreadable.

“I had no idea,” I said. There must have been a note of reproach in this, because Clara fixed me for a beat or two in her calm gaze.

“You know I believe in privacy,” she said. “So does she, by all appearances. She’s barely left that farm in thirty years.”

We pulled up at the neighboring farmhouse—a gray cubist monstrosity that could have served as a hotel—and I was thinking of Zoey’s words when she left me here, four years ago now—You should settle in. Meet the neighbors—and wondering why I’d never been able to properly apprehend anything she’d ever said. I stepped out of the truck into glaring sunlight.

The front door opened, and the woman who stepped out was around my age, early sixties.

“Good morning, Gaspery,” Talia said.