a regrettable inconvenience. Inside was a separate note, folded so tightly that its paper had cracked along the crease. The handwriting was unfamiliar. It contained only nine words: If you still believe your father, come hear the music. Lydia had read those words until the ink seemed to blur, then locked herself in the little room where she taught piano lessons and tried to decide whether hope was worth another humiliation.
Her younger brother, Samuel, had made the decision harder. At seventeen, he was already tall enough to wear their father's old coat, though the cuffs remained too long. He worked as an apprentice at a printing shop, his fingers almost permanently stained with ink, and came home each evening pretending that the jokes about his family did not trouble him. When Lydia showed him the invitation, he set down the bread he was slicing and stared at the silver lettering. "Those people watched Father suffer," he said. "You owe them nothing." Lydia agreed. Yet she kept thinking of the note, and of how impossible it should have been for anyone outside the family to know that there was music worth hearing.
Before the scandal, their house on Spruce Street had been full of sound. Their mother sang while kneading bread. Samuel beat ridiculous rhythms on the dining table. Daniel Bellamy, who served as treasurer for the St. Anne's Relief Society, played the violin after supper, making up little melodies and laughing when he forgot the endings. The society provided food, coal, and lodging for the families of sailors lost at sea. Daniel considered its work a sacred trust. He spoke of every dollar as if it belonged to a particular hungry child. Wealthy merchants admired his diligence, and the society's president, Silas Wetherell, often called him the most honorable man in Philadelphia.
Then came the winter when ships remained too long at sea, prices rose, and businesses began failing. Thirteen thousand dollars disappeared from the society's accounts. Wetherell announced that Daniel had altered the books and transferred the missing funds to a private investment. Documents appeared carrying Daniel's signature. A meeting was held without allowing him to examine the originals. People who had eaten at the Bellamys' table suddenly could not remember their address. Daniel denied the accusation until his voice gave out, but denial seemed only to make him look more desperate. By spring he had lost his position, his home, and nearly every friend he possessed.