They practiced only twenty minutes the first day. Lucas refused to become Harold. He did not correct every mistake. He asked Stephen what he wanted from the session.
“I want to get through the first line without wanting to throw the trumpet.”
“Excellent measurable objective.”
Stephen rolled his eyes.
By the fourth week, he could play the melody slowly.
By the sixth, he asked Lucas to try the harmony line marked STEP HEN HERE.
Lucas played Harold’s original melody while Stephen entered beneath it.
Stephen missed the entrance twice.
The third time, the notes met.
He stopped immediately.
“Again,” he said.
They played it again.
Anne began attending some rehearsals. She brought coffee and corrected family stories from the corner. Through her, Lucas learned that Harold had regretted the way he taught Stephen but never found a language for apologizing that did not sound like another lesson.
“He’d say things like, ‘I probably pushed you too hard,'” Anne explained. “Then immediately tell us why pushing was good.”
Stephen groaned. “Exactly.”
“He was getting closer,” she said.
Stephen looked at the marked music.
“Not close enough.”
“No.”
They allowed that to be true.
Stephen’s grief changed as he practiced. At first every note felt like a conversation with his father. Over time, some notes became simply music again.
That was a relief.
He began telling Lucas stories unrelated to conflict: Harold dropping a mute into a punch bowl, Harold playing Christmas songs too loudly, Harold pretending not to hear when the conductor asked the brass section to soften.
The man buried at the cemetery became larger than the unfinished argument.
Lucas changed too.
He had been terrified of another live funeral performance after the broken note. His sergeant noticed the tension and offered to rotate him away from bugle duties for a while.
Lucas considered it.
Then he declined.
Not because he wanted to prove courage. Because avoiding the instrument would turn one mistake into a boundary around his future.
At the next funeral, his first note was clean.
