The drawer had jammed halfway open.
Marcus pulled harder while his mother steadied the narrow hall table. Something tore beneath the wood, and an envelope slipped onto the floor.
His name was written across it.
The handwriting belonged to his grandmother.
She had died six months earlier.
His mother, Denise, took the envelope before he could reach it. She read the first line, then slowly sat down.
“What is it?”
At the end of the hall, his stepfather appeared.
For a moment, Graham looked at the envelope as though he had been expecting it for years.
Marcus took it from his mother.
Inside was a letter and a receipt from a music school.
For Marcus’s first year. He’ll tell you he doesn’t need lessons. Don’t believe him.
The receipt showed a deposit paid three years earlier.
Marcus looked up.
“You said they rejected me.”
Denise turned toward her husband.
Graham rubbed a hand across his mouth. “We couldn’t afford the rest.”
“So you told me I wasn’t good enough?”
“I said you didn’t get in.”
“I was fourteen. What did you think I heard?”
Graham looked away.
Denise stood. “Did my mother know?”
“She found out later.”
“And you hid her letter.”
There was no answer that could make the hallway feel the way it had a minute earlier.
Marcus went to his room and closed the door. His guitar stood behind a laundry basket, missing two strings. He hadn’t touched it since the rejection.
That evening, Graham knocked.
Marcus let him stand outside for a long time.
Finally, Graham said, “I was afraid you’d leave. Your grandmother could offer you things I couldn’t. I made that your problem.”
Marcus opened the door a few inches.
“You let me hate something I loved.”
“I know.”
“No. You know now.”
The next day, Denise called the school. The old place was gone, and the deposit couldn’t be recovered, but auditions for the evening program were still open.
Marcus almost refused.
Then he read his grandmother’s letter again.
Three weeks later, he stood outside an audition room with new strings on his guitar and the letter folded into his pocket.
Graham waited downstairs. Marcus had allowed him to drive, nothing more.
When Marcus came out, Graham stood.
“How did it go?”
Marcus considered him.
“They said they’ll let me know.”
This time, he had given the school his own email address.
End of Narrative
