"Because E-flat is a beginning note," he said. "It's where a lot of lullabies start. It sits right in the middle of where a woman sings comfortably. It's the note you'd hum to a baby if you weren't thinking about it."
The bell rang. I put the recorder in my bookbag and thanked him, and at the door he said, "Miss Haskins," and I turned around.
"If you find out," he said, "I'd like to know."
* * *
My mother found the tape that Thursday.
It was my own fault. I'd left the recorder on the kitchen table when I came home, because Sam had come tearing in behind me yelling that Jeremy Kaczmarek had a new Nintendo, a real one, with the robot, and could he go over, and in the confusion of boots and mittens and my mother calling the Kaczmareks on the wall phone, I forgot it. When I came back down from changing out of my school clothes, my mother was standing at the table with the recorder in her hand and the headphones around her neck, and her face was gray.
"What is this?" she said.
"It's for my investigation."
"Your investigation."
"Into Oliver. Into why he does it. I took it to Mr. Dombrowski, and he says it's an E-flat, and he says cats learn habits from people, and that it's a—"
"You took this to school?" My mother's voice went up and cracked in the middle. "You took this to school and played it for a teacher?"
"He's nice. He didn't laugh. Mom, he said it's a note lullabies start on, and I thought—"