"Did you tune it anyway?"
"I asked him first," Hobie said. "Seemed only polite."
Cass laughed, and Romy, beside her, jumped a little at the sound of it, and then went very still again, listening.
"How do you even do it," Cass said. "Tune a piano. Do you use a machine?"
"Some fellows do. There's an electronic one now, a strobe tuner, it shows you the pitch on a little wheel. I've got one in the car. But mostly I just use my ears." He touched his ear. His left one. "You listen for the beats. When two strings are almost the same note but not quite, they fight each other, and you hear this little wah, wah, wah in the sound. Like a pulse. And you turn the pin till the wah slows down, and slows down, and then it stops, and that's how you know they agree."
"That sounds nice," Cass said. "Two things agreeing."
"It's the best part of the job," Hobie said. And then, in the same easy voice, looking at his pie: "You do it too, you know. Listen for something. You turn your whole head, like you're trying to catch a beat."
Cass put her fork down.
He looked up quickly. "I'm sorry. That was—I notice things. It's a habit. It's none of my business."
"No," she said, after a moment. "It isn't."
It came out harder than she meant it to. The table went quiet. Beside her, Romy took her hands out from under her legs and picked up her fork, very carefully, and put the smallest possible bite of coconut cream into her mouth, as if eating might make the grown-ups start talking again.
"I'm sorry," Hobie said again.
"It's all right." She made herself smile. "I've just got one bad ear. Swimmer's ear when I was a kid. Never cleared up right."
It was the lie she told everyone, and she had told it so many times it came out smooth as a coin. But he looked at her for a second longer than people usually did, the way she had once seen him look at the plates on the floor, as if he were seeing the whole of something and not just the piece that was in front of him. Then he nodded and let it go. She liked him for letting it go. She liked him and resented him in about equal measure, which was a feeling she had not had about a man in a long time.