“Not always. But enough. Especially when he cared about the performance. He’d tighten his jaw and push too hard. The first note would split or come out thin. Then he’d be furious at himself for about ten seconds and play the rest like nothing happened.”
Anne laughed through tears. “He did.”
Stephen looked at Lucas. “When yours broke, I heard him. That’s why I looked up.”
Lucas had no answer.
All afternoon he had carried that glance as evidence of failure. To Stephen, the mistake had opened a door to memory.
“I still wish I’d played it cleanly,” Lucas said.
“I’m not telling you the mistake was better. I’m telling you it didn’t ruin anything.”
Lucas nodded slowly.
That distinction mattered.
Stephen lifted the marked music again.
Near the bottom of the page, a second trumpet line was written in smaller notation. Lucas had assumed it was part of the arrangement. Anne leaned closer.
“That wasn’t there when we were kids.”
Stephen frowned.
Lucas studied the pencil. The second line entered after the melody’s first phrase and moved beneath it in a simple harmony. Beside the entrance, Harold had written two words.
STEPHEN HERE.
Stephen stopped breathing.
Anne covered her mouth.
“He added that,” she said.
Stephen touched the words but did not unfold the page farther.
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
There was no date. No final message. No explanation designed for discovery.
Only a place in the music his father had apparently left open for him.
Stephen began crying then, not quietly.
Lucas looked away toward the wet grass.
Anne sat beside her brother and put an arm around him.
“He knew I wasn’t going to play,” Stephen said.
“Maybe he hoped you would someday,” Anne replied.
“At his funeral?”
“Maybe not only there.”
