Chapter 9: Rosin

On Thursday night it rained so hard that the gutters over the church hall overflowed.

I was stacking music stands at eight when the side door opened.

Max stood in the frame with a cello case in his arms.

He was soaked to the skin.

His hair was plastered flat, and water ran off his sleeves onto the boards.

He was holding the case against his chest with both hands.

I knew the case.

It was dark green, scuffed white at the corners, with a strap I had mended myself in the third grade.

I put the music stand down.

I did not trust my legs.

"Max."

"Don't say anything yet," he said. "I'd like to put it down somewhere dry."

He crossed the hall and laid the case on the stage, flat, and stepped back.

"The music room was locked," he said.

"It's always locked," I said.

"I took the hinges off."

"You took the door off?" I said.

"With a screwdriver from the garage," Max said. "It took forty minutes. Mother heard the banging, and I told her I was fixing the pipes."

"And she believed you?"

"She was crying about her hip. I don't think she was listening."

I knelt by the case and unlatched it with shaking hands.

The smell reached me first, old wood and rosin and the cedar of my mother's closet.

Then I saw the scroll, with the small mend where it had cracked in a move when I was twelve.

I reached into the lower bout, where it was dark.

Inside the wood, in faded blue ink, was my mother's handwriting.

A. Linford, 1998.

I put my hand over my mouth.

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