Chapter 1: The Drawing on the Piano
Every member of staff in that hotel lobby stopped moving.
A housekeeper's son had just drawn all over the maestro's grand piano, and the maestro was heading straight toward him.
The boy, Zeke, eight years old, blond, white shirt buttoned to the very top, didn't run.
He didn't even look up.
He continued drawing.
White marker on black lacquer: a man at a piano with a bright green scarf, a little boy sitting on a bench next to him.
His mother hurried behind the old man, shoes clicking on the marble.
She threw her open palm up between them and pleaded, fast and breathless:
“Zeke — Maestro, forgive him, please.”
Maestro Vasko is tall, silver-haired, black suit, red pocket square.
He didn't glance at her.
He touched his glasses and leaned down over the drawing, and the anger drained out of his face.
“What are you making there, boy?”
Zeke reached up and pressed his finger against the man with the green scarf.
“It's Dad.”
His face crumpled.
Tears rolled down to his collar.
The manager's polishing cloth moved toward the drawing, and a hand stopped it.
Zeke looked up, eyes swimming, and asked very properly:
“Do you have green?”
Vasko didn't answer him.
He walked away to the other end of the piano, opened the bench, and lifted out a folded scarf, the exact bright green the boy had drawn.
He held it in both hands and just stared at it, his shoulders sinking, as if the scarf weighed far more than wool should.
Then he returned to the boy, and he knelt.
He unfolded the green wool, and there was a photograph inside.
Zeke's mother gasped, mouth wide open, and gripped her son by the shoulders.
The photograph showed a young man in a green scarf, sitting at a piano, with a small blond child pressed against his side.
Zeke's eyes shifted from the photo to his drawing and back again.
“My dad played your piano?”
Vasko never answered.
He set the photograph against the lacquer, right next to the white lines.
Look closely at who is sitting on the bench in the photo.
Then look at the bench in the drawing.
Nobody in that lobby knew what the maestro had been keeping inside that piano bench.
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Why did Vasko keep that photograph hidden—and what will he tell Zeke?
Comment “NEXT” for Part 2.
