Chapter 18
Healing was not straight.
Some mornings, I woke up angry all over again.
Some evenings, Harper cried because she missed the idea of Lucinda, not the real woman.
My father learned to sit with both.
He stopped trying to fix feelings with gifts.
That was new.
He apologized when he got it wrong.
That was newer.
Therapy helped.
Music helped.
Painting helped Harper.
The youth orchestra terrified me in the best way.
I was no longer the only talented kid in the room.
I was one of many.
At first, that scared me.
Then it freed me.
I did not have to be perfect to deserve my place.
I only had to work.
One day after rehearsal, Clara asked about my old violin.
“The broken one?” I said.
“Yes.”
“My father kept it.”
“Good,” she said. “Bring it to Bellini.”
“Why?”
“Some breaks cannot be repaired. Some can be transformed.”
Mr. Bellini could not restore it as an instrument.
The damage was too deep.
But he saved pieces of the wood.
He made a small frame from them.
Inside it, he placed the original label, one curled string, and a tiny piece of the varnished back.
At the bottom, he engraved my mother’s name.
Elena De Luca.
Then mine.
Amelia De Luca.
When he gave it to me, I cried in the shop.
My father cried too.
We hung it in the music room beside Harper’s painting.
Not as a wound.
As proof.
Lucinda had broken the violin.
She had not broken the music.
That night, Harper and I sat on the floor under the frame.
“Do you ever wish she would become good?” Harper asked.
I knew who she meant.
“Yes,” I said. “Sometimes.”
“Me too.”
“Wanting that doesn’t mean you have to let her near you.”
Harper leaned her head on my shoulder.
May you like
“I know.”
And I believed she did.
