The video was too clean. The response from actual musicians too credible. But they added a low-level friction to the attention Elijah was receiving. A faint question mark that Ethan had placed there deliberately hoping it would grow. Elijah heard the rumors third hand by Thursday afternoon.
He filed them in the same category as most things at this school. Noted, irrelevant, moved on. On Friday, the school received an email. It came through the main office address and was forwarded to Whitmore by the administrative assistant with a note that said simply, "You'll want to see this." The email was from the outreach coordinator at the Aldridge Conservatory, a music institute about 40 minutes outside the city with a junior fellowship program for students between 12 and 16. They had seen the video.
They were inquiring about Elijah Carter. Specifically, whether he was enrolled in any formal music training and whether the school would be open to facilitating a conversation. Whitmore read the email twice. He then called the administrative assistant back and told her to hold any responses to outside inquiries about Elijah until further notice. Danielle Carter worked 12-hour shifts 3 days a week and spent the other four holding the rest of life together.
The groceries, the bills, the small repairs the building super never got to, the phone calls to her mother in Atlanta, the laundry that always seemed to regenerate. She was 38 and she moved through her days with the efficiency of someone who had learned that time was not a resource to be enjoyed but managed. She loved her son with a completeness that she wasn't always sure she expressed adequately because expressing things required time and time was the one thing that was always short. Yeah, she paid attention to him in the specific way of parents who can't always be present. She read the silences.
She noticed the way he carried himself when something was wrong versus when he was just tired. She watched his hands. She found the video Friday evening sitting at the kitchen table after he'd gone to his room. She'd seen a notification someone had texted her, a co-worker who'd sent it with three exclamation points and the message, "Is this your Elijah?" She watched it. She watched it again.
Then she sat at the table for a long time, hands wrapped around a mug that had gone cold. She wasn't surprised by his ability. She had always known it, had heard him practicing through the wall of his room, had seen the notebook filled with music. He had understood enough of what his grandfather had poured into those early years to know it had taken root deeply. She was not surprised that he could play like that.
What moved through her sitting at the kitchen table was something more specific. The image of her son walking across a gym floor toward a piano, alone, with six hundred people waiting for him to fail, and choosing to sit down anyway. She pressed her fingers to her mouth. When he came out for water, she was still at the table. "You were going to tell me?" she said, "Not angry, just asking." He stopped.
He looked at the phone on the table. Something moved across his face that was close to relief, the particular relief of a thing you've been holding alone finally being known. "I didn't want you to worry while you were working," he said. She nodded slowly. "Elijah, come sit down." He sat across from her.