Noah swallowed.
For one second, he almost believed her.
Then he noticed something near her right hand.
A thin red line ran across one finger.
Fresh.
Exactly the kind of cut a snapped guitar string could leave.
His eyes dropped to it.
Emily noticed.
She immediately curled her fingers into her palm.
Noah looked back at her face.
“What happened to your finger?”
She glanced down.
“This?”
“Yes.”
“I cut it opening a soda can.”
“At six in the morning?”
She rolled her eyes.
“You’re unbelievable.”
Then she walked upstairs.
Noah did not follow.
He went back to the living room and sat on the floor beside the guitar.
For nearly ten minutes, he did nothing.
He did not cry.
That surprised him.
He thought he would.
Instead, he felt hollow.
The guitar had been one of the few things his father trusted Noah to keep in the living room rather than locked inside his room.
Daniel Bennett believed musical instruments should be used, not hidden away.
“Your mom didn’t buy that thing to turn it into a museum exhibit,” he had once told Noah. “Play it.”
So Noah had.
Every afternoon after school.
Every Saturday morning.
Whenever missing his mother became too heavy to carry quietly.
At first, he had barely known three chords.
Now he could play almost every song she had ever taught him.
The guitar had scratches on the back from Rebecca’s wedding ring.
A faded sticker remained near the bottom where she had once tried to remove a music-store label and given up halfway through.
Inside the sound hole, in black marker, she had written:
For wherever the music takes us.
Noah had read those words hundreds of times.
Now the soundboard was cracked directly beneath them.
At seven-thirty, Daniel called.
Noah almost did not answer.
His father worked as a service manager at an auto dealership twenty-five minutes from their home outside Columbus, Ohio. He started early and rarely checked his phone before lunch.
That morning, however, Daniel had forgotten an invoice folder on the kitchen counter.
“Noah, you awake?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you do me a favor?”
Noah stared at the guitar.
“What?”
“There’s a blue folder by the coffee maker. I need you to take a picture of the first invoice and text it to me.”
“Okay.”
Daniel went quiet.
“You all right?”
“Yeah.”
“Noah.”
“I’m fine.”
Daniel knew his son well enough to hear the lie.
“What happened?”
Noah closed his eyes.
Behind him, he heard Emily moving around upstairs.
“Nothing.”
“That didn’t sound like nothing.”
“I’ll send you the invoice.”
“Noah.”
“I have to get ready for school.”
He ended the call.
Ten seconds later, Daniel called again.
Noah declined it.
Then a text arrived.
Tell me what happened.
Noah stared at the screen.
He started typing.
Deleted it.
Typed again.
Deleted that too.
Finally, he took a picture of the broken guitar.
He sent it without a caption.
Daniel called immediately.
This time Noah answered.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I came downstairs and it was broken.”
Daniel’s voice changed.
“Where’s Emily?”
“Upstairs.”
“Was she there?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“She found it.”