Page 100 of Symphony of Salvation

“It’s different when the piece is personal. It feels like an attack on my soul… on my heart,” I added with a whispered fragility.

Niles studied me for a long time before facing forward and organizing the pages so they sat side by side. A dozen more were meant to bracket them. He’d selected a section in the middle. How he made sense of the mess was beyond me.

“My methods are my own,” I tried to explain. “I stack instrumental sections as I go, noting variations in the margins until there’s no room left on the page.”

“I’ll figure it out.” Niles played the same melody I’d heard from the kitchen, right hand with its long fingers moving delicately over the ivories. It wasn’t exactly how I envisioned it, but I stayed quiet, noting my use of written articulation might be to blame and not his interpretation.

After a time, I sat beside him and added a bassline. “The horns,” I explained. “It builds anticipation until the brass section takes over.”

Perhaps feeling I’d infringed on his space, Niles stopped playing, chin lowered.

“Don’t stop. Keep going. The clarinets have a moving part coming up. I want to show you the transition I planned.”

His hesitation was brief, but he continued, and I added the parts that stood out in my head, noting changes I hadn’t seen before.

I closed my eyes. Not only could I hear Niles’s symphony, but the warm press of his body by my side catapulted me into another realm. His scent filled my nose. I was free, floating, soaring, no more chains to bind me, no more right or wrong.

Niles kept up when my creative mind demanded this or that or something new. In the end, he stopped playing.

He wouldn’t look at me, fixed instead on the penciled mess of a composition.

“So?” I asked into the silence.

“I think… it’s brilliant.”

“It’s nowhere close to finished. It’s… more of an idea at the moment. I’m still coaxing it to life. Nurturing it slowly until it unfolds.”

He huffed a soft, sad laugh that wasn’t a laugh at all. “An idea. Yourideais better than the best thing I’ve ever written.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“It’s true.”

“Will you ever share some of it with me? I promise not to criticize.”

Niles huffed. “You don’t have to mollycoddle me, August. How does one grow without criticism?”

“True, but there’s a time and place for it. On the day we met—”

“I don’t want to discuss that.” He placed his fingers over the ivories but didn’t play, as though he hadn’t quite decided if he would. “If you want to hear something, give me space.”

I shuffled off the bench but stayed nearby.

“I’m not as good as you.”

Before he could play a single note, I skated my fingers along his jaw, turning him to face me. From my vantage above, Ipeered down into his sunset eyes, so troubled. “In many ways, Niles, you are better than me.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Name one.”

“I’ll name five. You are the farthest thing from egotistical. It’s one of my biggest flaws. In fact, you fail to see your own self-worth most days. You may not have raised a child, but you have an insight and patience with teenagers that far exceeds my own. You have the ability to see the positive qualities in a person and use them to help bolster their confidence.”

He tried to pull away, but I held his jaw firmly. “I’m not finished. ‘To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.’”

He slanted a brow. “You’re quoting Shakespeare?”

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