Madly Yours novel · Chapter 32 of 32
Chapter 32: Aloud
I took it out of his hands.
"Go to bed," I said. "Your own. Gran's orders."
He went, looking back twice.
I laid a towel under the lamp and opened my tuning kit.
The lid of the music box came up stiff.
Inside, under a pane of cloudy glass, sat a brass cylinder studded with tiny pins and a steel comb with its teeth lined up.
I wound the key.
Nothing.
I took out the screws and lifted the works free.
The spring was fine.
The little fan that sets the speed was glued solid with twenty years of old oil.
One pin on the cylinder was bent flat.
And one tooth of the comb had snapped clean off, high in the treble, and lay loose in the bottom of the case.
I cleaned the fan with a cotton swab and a drop of clock oil.
I lifted the bent pin with a needle, a hair at a time, the way you'd turn a tuning pin.
The tooth I couldn't fix.
At four in the morning I wound the key again.
The cylinder turned.
The comb sang.
A waltz, slow and sweet and a little tinny.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of Madly Yours are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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