Page 12 of Echoes of a Silent Song
“No.”Despair burst from him.“No, that can’t be the end.It can’t.”
“There aren’t any more pages.”
“No.I simply won’t accept it.”Callum covered the distance between the piano and his desk in two defiant strides and emptied the file box, sheet music spilling over the surface of his desk.He pawed through the mess, frantic.But the only things left were a bright-green concert program from 2005 and a couple dried-up, broken rubber bands.
He felt broken.He couldn’t even envy that composer anymore, whoever they were.Hehadto find the rest of that music.
His head snapped up, and he found Blair’s eyes.“Who wrote it?Does it say?”
She pursed her lips and flipped the page back over.“Nope.Probably Vic, though.”
The most likely scenario, to be sure.But this piece differed quite a bit from anything else he’d written.Much as he loved Vic Nelson’s work, Callum had never been touched—moved,changed—by a piece of music as he had by this one.
“It’s reminiscent of his style in places.”He dragged a hand through his mop of hair.“But there’s just something about it that’s ...”
“ ...not his style at all.”Blair looked up at him, his own confusion swimming in her depthless eyes.
“I’ll ask him.”Callum grabbed his phone, took a picture of the first page, and fired off a quick text to Vic.
“I mean ...the melody is a bit like some of his.”Blair studied the music again.“But the harmonies are rather different.More like Rutter than Nelson.”
“Exactly.”
Callum’s phone buzzed against the desk, and he grabbed it.
Might be an early draft of something I forgot about.I’m afraid my memory’s not what it used to be.
Callum read the text aloud, then set the phone on his desk, irritation tightening his neck.“Well, if this is one of Vic’s early drafts, he needs to finish it, because it’s brilliant.”
Blair’s brow furrowed.“I wonder ...”
“Wonder what?”
“Rumor has it there was a student back in the sixties who wrote music.I always assumed it would be singer-songwriter guitar stuff, given the era, but maybe it’s this.”Blair turned the page over.“The handwriting is pretty juvenile-looking.”
Callum’s jaw unhinged.“Astudentwrote this?”
Blair shrugged.“Maybe.I heard she was a little bit of an odd duck.Iris ...something.Can’t remember the last name off the top of my head.”
He flipped through his mental choral database.“I can’t think of any composers named Iris.Maybe she wrote under a different name?”
“If it is her, then she’d have never had the chance.”Blair squared her shoulders and met his gaze.“Because Iris died in the spring of 1970.”
Chapter Five
September 1969
THEY DIDN’Ttune the bell over the summer.
Not that I’d thought they would, especially with the whole world watching Armstrong take “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”Plus, I was probably the only person in the history of Peterson High School to notice that the school bell clanged somewhere between an E—a slightly flat E, no less—and an F, which was, of course, slightly sharp.
I wasn’t bragging.Truthfully, I hated noticing these things.I wished I could go about the school day and not have my teeth set on edge and my nerves jangled every fifty minutes.What I wouldn’t give to be as oblivious to the sound as all the other students.Sometimes I wondered why God had made me so different from all the other girls, those blessedly normal girls with their straight hair and glossy lips and short skirts, gossiping and hugging and caring for nothing beyond makeup and boys.
And I was always on the outside looking in.
I ducked out of the crowded hallway into the little alcove leading to the music classrooms and double-checked my printed schedule.Yes.I had music theory next.Mr.Gilbert, our choir teacher, had finally convinced the administration to add it this year.“The nuts and bolts of music,”he’d told us.“Opening its hood and poking around underneath.”The analogy was meant to make theory more relatable to the other students, but I hadn’t needed any convincing.
It was music.
