Chapter 3 - The Workshop That Never Locked
Arthur Ellis's workshop sat on a narrow street in Newark, squeezed between a barber shop and a bakery that filled the sidewalk with warm yeast every morning. Its green paint was peeling. The sign still read ELLIS STRING REPAIR, although the first E had fallen off in a storm.
Mara arrived at eight the morning after the concert. She hadn't slept much. The video of her bow had begun appearing online, along with a close-up of Grant's swollen jaw and competing claims about what happened backstage. She refused to read the comments.
Ray was already at the bench, studying the broken violin beneath a lamp. He had removed the loose strings and secured each piece in soft cloth. There was no instant fix. A proper restoration might take months, and some damage could never be made invisible.
“Tell me the truth,” Mara said.
“The top is split across the sound post. One rib's shattered. I'll ask a specialist to look. We're not putting glue on it just because you're hurting.”
“Thank you.”
He offered her coffee in Arthur's chipped mug. She sat at the workbench where she'd learned to sharpen a pencil against sandpaper so its tip wouldn't snap during notation.
“My mother says Brooke can take the house.”
Ray gave her a long look. “The house mortgage was paid off when your father died. But I haven't seen their finances in years.”
“Brooke told me she saved this shop.”
“Your sister did keep the rent current for eleven months while you toured. So did I. So did the quartet teacher next door. We all helped. Brooke wrote the checks and decided that made her the owner of the sacrifice.”
Mara swallowed. “I didn't know you paid.”
“You were sending money too.”
“I thought that went to repairs.”
“Some did.”
He opened a drawer and lifted a thick binder of receipts. It held every payment he'd made, cross-referenced with deposits and handwritten notes Arthur had insisted on keeping even when his health failed. The pages were tedious. That was why they mattered.
A teenage violinist knocked on the workshop door. Her name was Tessa Quinn, sixteen, and she carried a school instrument whose bridge had shifted during an audition.
“Ms. Ellis? I saw your concert,” she said. “Are you okay?”
“I'm getting there.”
Tessa saw the pieces on the table and stopped. “Was that the blue-line violin?”
Mara nodded.
“Mr. Arthur made me draw a blue line on my practice chart because I kept missing the fourth measure,” Tessa said. “He said it was okay to need a way back.”
Mara smiled painfully. “That sounds like him.”
Ray adjusted Tessa's bridge while Mara asked about school. Tessa had won a seat in the regional youth ensemble but couldn't pay the travel fee. Ellis Heritage's community scholarship had been cancelled that week.
“Brooke said the foundation was restructuring,” Tessa explained. “They emailed all of us.”
Mara felt the letter in her purse grow heavier. “How many students?”
“Thirty-seven.”
That afternoon, she visited the house where she and Brooke grew up. The front porch needed painting; a ceramic bowl of keys still sat by the door. Diane let her in with the wariness of someone expecting an argument she'd rehearsed all night.
“I made soup,” she said.
“Good. We can eat while we talk.”
They sat at the kitchen table. Mara spread the licensing letter beside their bowls.
“Why would Brooke say she can take a house you own?”
Diane traced a knot in the wood. “Two years ago, I borrowed against it. The property taxes were rising, and the roof failed. Brooke arranged the loan. I didn't read every page carefully enough.”
“How much?”
Her mother told her. It was more than Mara's teaching income in two years, but not an impossible sum. What frightened Mara was Diane's next sentence.
“The loan is from a company Brooke manages. She says if the music deal falls through, the repayment comes due.”
“That's a threat, Mom.”
“I know that now.”
Mara wanted to ask why Diane had trusted Brooke. Then she looked at the ceiling stain that had spread since her last visit and remembered how often she'd called from airports saying she would be home soon.
“I should have asked about the roof,” she said.
“I should have told you.”
Diane pushed an old photograph across the table. Three girls stood in the workshop: Mara at sixteen holding a violin, Brooke at nineteen behind a music stand, and Diane at the piano. Arthur had taken the picture.
“That song didn't begin with just you and Dad,” Diane said.
“I know Brooke wrote the bridge.”
“She wrote more than that in the first version.”
Mara frowned. “What first version?”
Diane looked toward the hallway where Brooke's childhood bedroom door had remained shut for years.
“You heard the piece when you were sixteen,” she said. “But Brooke and your father started it the summer before. They called it 'The River Between Us' because she wanted to write something the two of you could play together.”
Mara stared at the photograph. No one had ever said that.
“Why didn't he tell me?”
“He did. In a rehearsal tape. You weren't there when they recorded it.”
“Where is the tape?”
Diane's face shifted.
“Brooke took the box after the funeral.”
That evening Mara called her sister. Brooke answered on the fourth ring, speaking over restaurant music.
“I heard you're visiting Mom.”
“I want to hear the first recording.”
Silence.
“You know about that?” Brooke asked.
“Mom told me you started the piece with Dad.”
“About time.”
“I have never denied your eight measures.”
“That's because eight measures were all they left me.”
May you like
The line went dead. Mara stood in the kitchen holding the phone. Her sister had done something unforgivable. She might also have spent years believing she'd been erased.
Both things could be true.
