Beneath the Halcyon Grand’s Golden Lights, a Single Father Played a Lost Love’s Melody—And the Steel-Boned CEO Heard the Secret Message That Was Never Meant to Survive
The lobby of the Halcyon Grand Hotel glowed with warm amber lights, marble floors polished to mirrors, and quiet classical music drifting through hidden speakers. Business travelers came and went in crisp suits, dragging sleek luggage behind them.
Eli Carter moved differently from them.
He wasn’t lost—just careful, like someone trying not to take up space he hadn’t paid for. His jacket was clean but worn at the cuffs. His hair was still damp from the rain outside. And beside him, perched on a velvet bench with her legs swinging, his daughter watched the world with the solemn curiosity of a child who had learned to read people the way other kids read comics.
Mia pressed her palms against her knees and whispered, “Do you think they’ll be mad?”
Eli smiled like it didn’t cost him anything. “Mad about what?”
“About you… playing.”
He glanced at the grand piano—black as a still lake, its lid lifted like a wing. A small brass plaque on the side read: PLEASE ENJOY. GUESTS WELCOME.
He’d read it three times already, as if the letters might change.
“Only if I play badly,” he murmured.
Mia’s eyes brightened. “You never play badly.”
Eli’s chest tightened at that, because children said things with full belief. Adults said things with terms and conditions.
He looked around. The concierge desk was busy. The security guard near the entrance was watching the revolving doors more than the piano. A couple in matching travel coats leaned over a phone, arguing quietly about directions. The hotel smelled like citrus polish and expensive coffee.
Eli wasn’t here to cause trouble.
He was here because his interview was upstairs in forty minutes—an entry-level position with benefits, the kind that came with steady hours and predictable paychecks. The kind that could make a life less like a balancing act over a canyon.
But Mia had been restless since the bus ride. The storm had made her jumpy. The big lobby made her small.
And the piano…
The piano made Eli remember a version of himself that didn’t feel like it belonged to the past.
He stood, slowly, as if rising too fast might startle the world.
Mia reached out and caught his sleeve. “The song,” she said softly. “The one you hum when you think I’m asleep.”
Eli’s throat went tight. “That one?”
She nodded. “It makes the scary parts go away.”
He brushed a kiss against her forehead and stepped toward the piano.
Up close, the instrument looked even more intimidating—less like something you played, more like something you asked permission from. Eli sat anyway, shoulders easing into a posture his body remembered.
His fingers hovered over the keys.
For a moment, he did nothing.
Then he played a single note.
It rang through the lobby—clear, gentle, bright as a pinprick of light.
The second note followed, and then the third, and the melody began to unfurl like a ribbon pulled from a pocket you forgot you had.
It wasn’t a famous song.
It wasn’t even finished, not really.
It was a forgotten melody—one he’d written long ago with someone who’d once believed in him so fiercely it felt like a promise.
Eli’s hands moved with quiet certainty. The music softened the marble. It warmed the air. Even the rain against the tall windows seemed to keep time.
Mia leaned back on the bench, eyes half-closed, like she was letting the notes build a shelter around her.
And on the mezzanine level above the lobby, a woman in a tailored charcoal suit stepped out of a private elevator.
She was surrounded by people who moved when she moved, paused when she paused—two assistants clutching tablets, a man with an earpiece, a hotel manager whose smile looked practiced enough to belong in a mirror.
The woman’s posture didn’t just suggest power.
It announced it.
Clara Voss, CEO of Voss Meridian Holdings, had a schedule that ran like a machine. She negotiated acquisitions over breakfast and cut through boardroom arguments with a single raised eyebrow. The press called her “the winter queen” because she rarely smiled in photos.
She had learned, long ago, that warmth was something people tried to take from you.
Clara was halfway through a sentence—something about the conference room setup—when the first phrase of the melody reached her.
She stopped so sharply that her assistant nearly collided with her shoulder.
The hotel manager’s smile faltered. “Ms. Voss?”
Clara didn’t answer.
Her gaze snapped toward the lobby floor, locking onto the piano like it had become the only object in the building.
The melody continued—soft, precise, painfully familiar.
Clara’s breath caught. Her fingers, usually steady, curled slightly at her side.
No.
It wasn’t possible.
Because that song didn’t exist anywhere except in her memory.
She had written it down once, in a spiral notebook that smelled like pencil shavings and sea salt. She had hummed it into a cheap recorder on a summer night, laughing because the boy beside her kept playing the wrong chord on purpose just to make her laugh harder.
And then she had lost him.
Just… lost him.
The way you lost a person when you were too young to understand what adults could do with threats and money and silence.
Clara took one step forward.
Then another.
The people around her murmured, confused, trying to keep up.
But Clara barely noticed them.
Because down there, at the piano, sat a man with rain-dark hair and careful shoulders—his face turned slightly away, as if he didn’t expect anyone to look too closely.
Yet Clara recognized the way his hands moved.
She recognized the small hesitation before the chorus.
She recognized the heartbreak tucked into the final descending notes.
Her voice came out quieter than she meant it to, almost a whisper lost in the lobby’s golden air.
“Eli?”
Eli’s hands faltered.
The melody slipped—one wrong note, then another—like a heart missing its beat.
He froze with his fingers resting on the keys.
Slowly, as if turning too fast might shatter something, he looked up.
And there she was.
Clara Voss, impossibly polished, impossibly distant, standing above him like a memory that had learned how to wear armor.
Eli’s blood went cold.
Mia sat up straighter, eyes darting between them.
The lobby seemed to hush, as if everyone had agreed without speaking to listen.
Clara descended the stairs, one measured step at a time. Her entourage hovered behind her, uncertain.
When she reached the piano, she stopped close enough that Eli could see the faintest freckle near her left eye—the one she used to hate, the one he used to say looked like a tiny star.
Her lips parted, but for a second nothing came out.
Eli stood abruptly, the bench scraping softly against the floor.
“Don’t,” he said, too quickly.
Clara blinked. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t say my name like that,” he replied, voice rough. “Not here.”
Her eyes narrowed—not in anger, but in something sharper, older. “Like what, Eli? Like I’m looking at a ghost?”
He swallowed. “I’m just… a guest.”
Clara’s gaze flicked to Mia.
Mia held Clara’s stare with the fearless directness of a child.
Clara’s expression shifted—something human breaking through the executive sheen. “Who is she?”
Eli’s throat tightened. “My daughter.”
A beat of silence.
Clara’s eyes dropped to Eli’s hands again, as if they might carry the rest of the answer.
“You’re a father,” she said softly, like she was testing the words.
Eli forced his shoulders to relax. “Yes.”
“And you’re here… playing our song,” Clara whispered, voice suddenly edged with disbelief. “In my hotel.”
Eli flinched at our.
“It’s not—” he began, then stopped, because denying it would be the cruelest lie in the world.
Clara leaned closer, her perfume clean and understated, nothing like the salt-air girl he remembered. “I have spent fifteen years trying to convince myself you never existed,” she said. “And now you’re sitting at a piano like you have every right to be here.”
Eli’s voice came low. “I don’t have a right to anything.”
Clara straightened, her face hardening again as if she’d remembered how to protect herself. “Then explain it,” she said, suddenly all CEO. “Explain why you disappeared. Explain why you never wrote, never called, never—”
“Clara,” he interrupted, and her name sounded like a confession in his mouth. “Not here.”
The hotel manager stepped forward nervously. “Ms. Voss, should I—”
Clara lifted a hand without looking away from Eli. The manager stopped as if the air itself had turned solid.
Clara’s gaze was locked on Eli like she was afraid he might vanish again if she blinked.
“Private lounge,” she said to her assistant without turning. “Now.”
Her assistant hesitated. “Your meeting starts in—”
“Now,” Clara repeated, and the word landed like a gavel.
The entourage shifted into motion. The hotel manager led the way toward a frosted-glass door near the far side of the lobby.
Clara looked at Eli again. “Bring her,” she said, nodding toward Mia. “I’m not having this conversation with you alone. Not when you have a child watching you lie.”
Eli’s jaw tightened.
Mia slid off the bench and took his hand.
“Daddy,” she whispered, “do you know the ice lady?”
Eli managed a strained smile. “Something like that.”
They followed Clara.
As the frosted-glass door closed behind them, the lobby’s hum returned—quiet conversations resuming, luggage wheels rolling again.
But inside the private lounge, the air felt thicker, as if the past had taken a seat at the table.
Clara stood by the window, the city lights behind her like a glittering defense.
Eli remained near the door with Mia, as if staying close to the exit could keep him steady.
Clara turned.
“Start,” she said.
Eli let out a slow breath. “I didn’t come here for you.”
Clara’s eyes flashed. “How convenient.”
“I came for an interview,” he said. “Maintenance position. Hotel staff.”
Clara stared at him like she couldn’t reconcile the word maintenance with the boy who used to talk about conservatories and composing film scores.
“You were going to Juilliard,” she said, voice cracking on the name like it still hurt. “You got the scholarship letter. I saw it.”
Eli’s gaze fell to the carpet. “I never went.”
“Why?”
He lifted his eyes, and there it was—the part of him that had never healed. “Because your father came to my house.”
Clara went still.
Eli continued, carefully, like stepping through broken glass. “He told me if I showed up to the audition, if I kept seeing you, he’d make sure my mom lost her job. He had names, Clara. He had dates. He knew my landlord. He knew the principal at my school. He knew everything.”
Clara’s face went pale. “That’s not—”
“It is,” Eli said, voice firm now. “He told me you were going to inherit a company. He told me I was a distraction. A phase. He said I could either disappear quietly or watch my family get crushed slowly.”
Mia squeezed Eli’s hand, sensing the shift in his tone.
Clara’s throat moved as she swallowed. “He told me you left,” she whispered. “He said you got scared. He said you wanted an easy life.”
Eli gave a humorless laugh. “Easy.”
Clara’s eyes shone, but her voice sharpened to keep control. “So you just… obeyed him?”
Eli’s jaw flexed. “I was eighteen. My mother was working two jobs. My little brother was in and out of school because we couldn’t afford the bus pass. I didn’t have lawyers, Clara. I had a guitar with one missing string.”
Clara flinched like the image struck her somewhere tender. “You could have told me.”
Eli’s voice softened. “I tried.”
He reached into his jacket pocket slowly, then pulled out a folded piece of paper so worn the creases looked like scars.
Clara’s eyes narrowed. “What is that?”
Eli held it out.
Clara took it with careful fingers and unfolded it.
A letter.
The handwriting was younger, messier, full of urgency.
Clara’s eyes moved over the lines, and her breath stuttered.
At the bottom, the paper was stained—faded circles where tears had hit ink.
“I wrote it the night before your graduation,” Eli said quietly. “I waited behind the auditorium. I watched the families arrive. I watched you in your cap and gown.”
Clara’s voice trembled. “I never got this.”
“I know,” Eli said. “Your father’s driver was there. He took it from me. He told me I was making the smart choice by letting you move on.”
Clara’s hand tightened around the letter until the paper crinkled.
For a moment, her CEO mask slipped entirely, and she looked… younger. Like a girl on a pier with salt in her hair, humming a melody into the wind.
Then her eyes hardened again—not against Eli, but against something behind her own ribs.
“My father is gone,” Clara said, voice tight. “He can’t answer for this.”
Eli nodded. “I’m not asking for revenge.”
“Then why are you here?” Clara demanded. “Why play that song where I could hear it?”
Eli looked down at Mia.
Mia looked up at him, solemn.
“He hums it when I have bad dreams,” she said, as if offering a simple fact. “It makes me brave.”
Clara’s gaze softened involuntarily.
Eli swallowed. “After I left, I tried to keep music. I did weddings, little gigs, anything. But life… happens. And when Mia’s mom left, it was just us. So I did what I had to do.”
Clara’s voice went quiet. “And you never looked for me.”
Eli’s expression tightened. “I did. Once. Years later.”
Clara’s eyes sharpened.
“I went to your company’s headquarters,” he admitted. “I stood in the lobby like an idiot with a folder of sheet music. I told the receptionist I had something for you.”
“And?” Clara asked, breath caught.
Eli’s mouth twisted. “She laughed. Said Ms. Voss doesn’t take walk-ins. Then security escorted me out like I was… dirt.”
Clara closed her eyes briefly, as if swallowing a bitter truth. “I didn’t know.”
“I know,” Eli said. “That’s the point. You were already becoming someone surrounded by walls.”
Silence stretched.
Then Clara’s gaze dropped to Mia again. “How old are you?” she asked, her voice gentler.
“Eight,” Mia replied.
Clara did the math without meaning to.
Something flickered across her face—relief, confusion, and something like mourning for a life that might have been.
“And your interview,” Clara said, voice turning brisk, almost too brisk. “What time?”
“In… thirty minutes,” Eli answered warily.
Clara nodded once. “You’ll go. You’ll get the job.”
Eli blinked. “That’s not—”
“I’m not offering charity,” Clara cut in, though her voice wavered. “I’m correcting something that never should’ve been broken. Consider it… overdue.”
Eli’s shoulders stiffened. “I don’t want favors.”
Clara’s eyes flashed. “Then don’t call it that. Call it a consequence.”
Eli stared at her, torn between pride and exhaustion. “Clara…”
Her name sounded different now—less like a dream, more like a door he wasn’t sure he should open.
Clara took a careful breath. “There’s more,” she said suddenly. “There has to be more. Because that song—”
She lifted her chin toward the piano visible through the lounge’s glass wall.
“That melody wasn’t finished,” Clara continued. “Only two people knew the bridge. Only two people knew the last part.”
Eli’s eyes narrowed. “I finished it.”
Clara’s breath caught. “When?”
Eli’s gaze flicked to Mia. “When she was born.”
Clara’s voice softened, almost afraid. “Why?”
Eli looked at the floor, then back up. “Because I needed to believe something beautiful could survive… even when everything else didn’t.”
Clara’s eyes shone again, and this time she didn’t hide it with anger.
“Play it,” she whispered.
Eli hesitated.
Clara’s voice sharpened with desperation. “Please. Just… play it. The whole thing.”
Eli looked at Mia.
Mia nodded once, solemn like a judge.
Eli moved back to the piano, sat, and let his fingers find the keys again.
The melody returned—familiar at first, like a road Clara remembered walking barefoot.
Then it shifted.
The bridge unfolded—new notes, new harmonies—tender and aching, like someone had taken a wound and stitched it with gold thread.
Clara’s breath hitched.
Because hidden inside the new bridge was something impossible.
A pattern.
Not random—intentional.
It was the same musical “code” Eli used when they were teens: a way of turning notes into letters, a private game they played when they wanted to say things out loud without saying them.
Clara’s lips parted as she decoded it in her head, heart pounding.
I TRIED. I LOVED YOU. I STILL DO.
Her hand flew to her mouth.
Eli kept playing, eyes focused on the keys like if he looked up, he might not be able to finish.
When the last note faded, silence filled the lounge like a held breath.
Clara’s voice broke. “You put a message in the music.”
Eli didn’t look up. “Old habit.”
Clara stepped closer, her heels silent on the carpet. “You knew I’d understand.”
Eli finally lifted his gaze, and there was raw honesty in it that made Clara’s chest ache. “I didn’t know you’d ever hear it.”
Clara swallowed hard. “I’m hearing it now.”
Her assistant appeared at the lounge door, nervous. “Ms. Voss, the board is waiting in the executive suite.”
Clara didn’t look away from Eli. “Tell them I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
The assistant froze. “They’ll be upset.”
Clara’s smile was sharp. “Let them try.”
The assistant disappeared.
Clara turned back to Eli, voice lowering. “That meeting is about buying this hotel chain,” she said. “And the land beneath three of its properties.”
Eli’s brow furrowed. “Okay.”
Clara’s jaw tightened. “One of those properties is in Harbor Point.”
Eli went still.
Harbor Point—the seaside town where he and Clara had met as teenagers. Where they’d written their melody on a pier while gulls screamed overhead and the air smelled like summer.
Clara watched recognition hit him like a wave. “You grew up there,” she said quietly.
Eli’s voice went hoarse. “My mother still lives there.”
Clara nodded once. “Voss Meridian wants to redevelop the waterfront. Luxury towers, private marina, the works.”
Eli’s hands curled into fists on his knees. “That pier—”
“Will be demolished,” Clara said, voice flat, like she hated herself for it.
Mia’s small voice cut through the tension. “The pier is where Daddy learned the song,” she said.
Clara’s eyes flicked to Mia, then back to Eli. “I didn’t know,” she whispered, and for the first time she sounded like she meant it.
Eli stood, anger and fear tangling in his chest. “So this is why the universe dropped you in front of me? To make sure you can watch my town disappear too?”
Clara flinched. “No.”
“Then what?” Eli demanded. “Because I don’t have the energy for poetic coincidences, Clara. I have a kid. I have rent. I have—”
Clara stepped closer, her voice turning fierce, not cold. “Then help me,” she said. “Because I walked into this hotel thinking I was about to sign a deal I’ve signed a hundred times. Efficient. Profitable. Clean.”
Her eyes glittered with something sharp and alive.
“And then you played that song,” she continued. “And suddenly I remembered what it felt like to care about something that can’t be measured.”
Eli stared at her, breathing hard.
Clara lifted the letter again, the one Eli had written years ago. “My father built my world out of control,” she said. “And I kept it running because I thought control was safety. But if he lied to me about you…”
Her voice shook, then steadied.
“…what else did he build on a lie?”
Silence pressed in.
Mia tugged Eli’s sleeve. “Daddy,” she whispered, “she looks like she’s trying not to cry.”
Eli’s throat tightened.
Clara exhaled slowly. “Go to your interview,” she said, voice firm again. “Take the job. Keep your life steady for her.”
She glanced at Mia.
Then Clara looked back at Eli with a strange kind of vow in her eyes.
“And tonight,” she added, “come back down here after eight. There’s a gala in the ballroom. My board will be there. The hotel executives will be there. Everyone who expects me to smile, sign, and destroy a piece of Harbor Point without thinking.”
Eli’s eyes narrowed. “Why would I come to that?”
Clara’s mouth curved—not quite a smile, but something close to courage. “Because I want you to play that melody again,” she said. “In front of all of them.”
Eli’s pulse jumped. “That’s… absurd.”
“Maybe,” Clara said softly. “Or maybe it’s the first honest thing I’ve done in years.”
Eli stared at her, conflicted.
Clara stepped back, shoulders squaring, CEO armor sliding into place again. “Fifteen minutes,” she said, mostly to herself. “Then I face them.”
She paused, then looked at Eli again, and her voice dropped into something almost gentle.
“Don’t disappear,” she whispered. “Not again.”
Eli held her gaze, heart pounding.
Then he nodded once—small, cautious, but real.
“I’ll be here,” he said.
That night, the Halcyon Grand transformed.
Crystal chandeliers blazed like constellations. The ballroom filled with polished laughter and expensive perfume. Men in tailored suits traded smiles like currency. Women in sleek dresses held champagne flutes with fingers that had never known calluses.
Eli stood at the edge of it all with Mia beside him in a simple navy dress someone from housekeeping had helped hem.
Mia stared wide-eyed at the glittering room. “Do we belong here?” she whispered.
Eli squeezed her hand. “We belong wherever we stand together.”
At the front of the ballroom sat the same grand piano—moved from the lobby for the evening’s “ambiance.”
Clara Voss stood near the stage speaking with her board, her posture flawless, her smile measured.
But her eyes kept drifting toward Eli like a compass needle that refused to behave.
A man with silver hair—one of the board members—leaned close to Clara, his expression impatient. Eli couldn’t hear the words, but he could read the tone: sign the deal, be done, stop wasting time.
Clara’s gaze flicked to Eli again.
Then she stepped onto the stage and tapped the microphone.
The room quieted, polite attention snapping into place.
Clara’s voice carried cleanly. “Thank you for being here,” she began. “Tonight, we celebrate a partnership—one that promises growth, beauty, and innovation.”
Applause.
Eli’s stomach twisted.
Clara continued, her gaze scanning the room. “But before we sign anything, I want to share something.”
Murmurs.
Clara’s eyes landed on Eli.
“My father taught me that business is about certainty,” she said. “Numbers. Control. Predictability.”
She paused.
“And yet the most important moments of my life have never been predictable,” she continued. “They’ve been… human.”
A ripple of discomfort ran through the crowd. CEOs didn’t do speeches like this.
Clara turned slightly, gesturing toward the piano. “Fifteen years ago, a boy wrote a song with me on a pier in Harbor Point,” she said, voice steady but eyes shining. “It was unfinished. It was imperfect. It was ours.”
The room went very still.
Clara looked directly at Eli. “Tonight, I’ve asked him to finish it.”
A few guests chuckled awkwardly, thinking it was a quirky performance setup.
But Eli saw the tightness in Clara’s shoulders—the bravery it took to expose herself like this.
His hands trembled as he guided Mia toward a chair near the stage.
Mia whispered, “Do the brave song.”
Eli stepped up to the piano.
Whispers swelled through the room—who was he, why was the CEO staring at him like that, why did this feel like something the guests hadn’t paid to witness?
Eli sat.
He placed his fingers on the keys.
And he played.
The melody filled the ballroom, threading through champagne bubbles and forced laughter, turning them into something quieter.
People who’d been checking phones looked up.
People mid-gossip fell silent.
The song wasn’t loud—it didn’t need to be.
It was honest.
And in the bridge, as the hidden message unfurled in notes, Clara closed her eyes as if letting it wash through her armor.
When the final note faded, the room remained silent for a beat too long.
Then—softly—someone began to clap.
Not the polished applause of investors.
The kind of clap someone gives when they’ve been unexpectedly reminded they’re alive.
More applause followed, hesitant at first, then stronger, until the ballroom filled with it.
Eli stood, heart pounding.
Clara stepped forward, microphone in hand, her gaze steady.
“That song,” she said, voice clear, “is tied to Harbor Point. To the pier. To the people who live there. To the community that taught me music before anyone taught me money.”
She inhaled.
“And because of that,” Clara continued, “Voss Meridian will not demolish the Harbor Point pier.”
Shock rippled through the room.
The silver-haired board member’s face tightened into disbelief.
Clara’s jaw set. “In fact,” she said, “we will fund its restoration. We will preserve the public waterfront. And we will establish a music scholarship for the children of Harbor Point—because talent should not be buried under concrete.”
The board member stepped forward sharply. “Clara—”
She lifted a hand. “This is not a discussion,” she said, voice like steel wrapped around a heartbeat. “This is a decision.”
The room buzzed, the atmosphere shifting from celebration to crisis.
But Clara didn’t flinch.
She turned her gaze to Eli, and in it was something fragile and fierce at once.
“Fifteen years ago,” she said quietly into the mic, “someone stole a letter meant for me.”
The room hushed again.
Clara held up the worn paper Eli had given her. “I found it today,” she said. “And I realized I’ve been living in a story someone else wrote for me.”
Her voice warmed, just a little.
“I’m done with that.”
She lowered the microphone.
The board erupted in murmurs, several members stepping toward her at once. The hotel executives looked panicked. The gala had gone off-script, and powerful people hated nothing more than being surprised.
Eli’s instincts screamed at him to grab Mia and run.
But Clara moved toward him instead—through the crowd, through the tension, through the consequences.
When she reached the piano, she stopped.
For a second, the noise fell away.
Clara looked at Eli like she was seeing not just who he had become, but who he had been—who they had been together, before fear rewrote everything.
“I can’t give you back time,” she said softly.
Eli’s throat tightened. “I don’t need time.”
Clara’s eyes flicked to Mia.
Mia looked up at Clara and said, completely sincere, “You looked frozen when Daddy played. Like you found something.”
Clara’s lips trembled into the smallest real smile. “I did.”
Eli swallowed. “Clara… this will cost you.”
She nodded once, unafraid. “I know.”
Eli stared at her, the ache in his chest twisting into something that felt like hope and terror holding hands.
Clara’s voice dropped even lower. “I spent years thinking love was a weakness,” she confessed. “But today, I heard a song that refused to die. And I realized weakness isn’t love.”
Her gaze lifted to meet his fully.
“Weakness is pretending you don’t care.”
Eli’s eyes stung.
Behind them, the board member was still arguing, still gesturing, still trying to drag Clara back into a world of contracts and obedience.
But Clara didn’t turn around.
Instead, she reached out—slowly, carefully, as if offering a choice rather than demanding one—and touched Eli’s hand.
Her fingers were warm.
Real.
Eli looked down at their hands, then back up at her face.
Mia slipped her small hand into Clara’s free hand as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Clara startled, then looked down.
Mia smiled—soft and brave.
“Are you going to be okay?” Mia asked.
Clara’s eyes glistened. “With you two here?” she whispered. “I think I might be.”
Eli let out a shaky breath.
For the first time in fifteen years, the melody in his chest didn’t feel like a ghost.
It felt like a beginning.
And in a ballroom full of people who thought power was measured in signatures, Clara Voss stood holding the hand of the man she’d lost—and the child who had unknowingly carried their song into the present.
Outside, rain tapped gently against the windows.
Inside, something long frozen finally began to thaw.
