“If Eleanor is standing beside you,” Daniel read, “then apparently my faith in curious people was justified.”
Everyone looked at Owen.
He beamed.
Thomas explained that he had hidden the completed arrangement of The Road Home in the cabinet after the 2002 concert.
But not for Mrs. Parker alone.
He wanted the piece eventually performed by students at the school where it had begun.
“Music belongs to whoever keeps it alive,” Thomas had written.
The arrangement lay beneath the photographs.
Full orchestration.
Choir.
Piano.
Strings.
Twenty-two pages.
Mrs. Parker lifted the first page.
“It’s beautiful.”
Ms. Delgado leaned beside her.
“It is.”
Owen frowned.
“But where’s the seventh letter?”
Daniel checked the case again.
Nothing.
For the first time, Mrs. Parker seemed relieved.
“Perhaps some things really are meant to remain lost.”
Owen looked unconvinced.
But the search stopped.
At least temporarily.
Instead, something else began.
Ms. Delgado proposed performing The Road Home at the school’s winter concert.
