Poppy's Music Box

The music starts after midnight, three thin notes at a time from somewhere down the upstairs hall. For a second I think I dreamed it, but then it comes again, the same broken lullaby Tessa used to play on the hand-painted ballerina box she bought in Charleston the summer before Poppy was born. The box disappeared after the funeral. Owen said he packed away anything too painful for the child.

I follow the sound to Poppy's room. Her door is open a crack. The music has stopped, but a ribbon of lamp light cuts across the floor. Poppy is sitting cross-legged on her rug in dinosaur pajamas, the old blue music box open in her lap like contraband. She looks up at me without surprise.

"Where did you get that?" I ask.

"It was in the back of my closet, behind the winter blankets." She turns the key again. The tiny tin melody limps through the first bars and breaks. "Did this used to be Mom's?"

She still calls Tessa Mom in the careful singular, even though she barely remembers her. I am Sloane at home, never anything maternal enough to compete with a dead woman. I used to think that restraint was noble. Tonight it feels like evidence of how little in this house I ever actually owned.

"Yes," I say. "Where exactly was it?"

"I told you. Closet." Poppy's eyes narrow the way they do when she senses adult editing. "Why are you asking like a detective?"

"Because it wasn't there yesterday."

That lands. She closes the lid with both palms. "Grandma Vivian was in here this morning looking for my debate shoes," she says. "And Dad came in after dinner because he said somebody had left the porch gate open."

"Did anyone else come in?"

Poppy hesitates. "I thought I heard the hall door around lunchtime. But when I looked, nobody was there." She meets my eyes. "Are we in trouble?"

I want to give her the kind of answer good adults give children. Instead I sit on the rug opposite her and take the music box gently from her hands. The ballerina inside is gone. In its place, taped to the velvet base, is a folded strip of paper.

I open it under the lamp. Three words, written in Tessa's slanting hand.

Ask about Harbor.

Poppy sees my face before I can hide it. "That handwriting," she whispers. "I've seen it before."

"Where?"

She swallows. "On a postcard in Dad's desk."