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far as we knew. Lucy asked me to turn off the TV because she wanted to go to sleep. I clicked the
remote, and that’s when we heard it. The piano break of ‘Not a Second Time,’ those twenty-nine notes.
Perfect. Not a single miss, and coming from downstairs.
“Doc, we were scared shitless. We thought we had an intruder in the house, only what kind of
burglar stops to play a little Beatles before grabbing the silverware? I don’t have a gun and my golf
clubs were in the garage, so I just picked up the biggest book I could find and went down to confront
whoever was there. Pretty stupid, I know. I told Lucy to grab the phone and dial 911 if I yelled. But
there was no one, and all the doors were locked. Also, the cover was down over the piano keys.
“I went back upstairs and told Lucy I hadn’t found anything or anyone. We went down the hall to
check the baby. We didn’t talk about it, we just did it. I think we knew it was Abra, but neither of us
wanted to say it right out loud. She was awake, just lying there in her crib and looking at us. You
know the wise little eyes that they have?”
John knew. As if they could tell you all the secrets of the universe, if they were only able to talk.
There were times when he thought that might even be so, only God had arranged things in such a way
so that by the time they could get beyond goo-goo-ga-ga, they had forgotten it all, the way we forget
even our most vivid dreams a couple of hours after waking.
“She smiled when she saw us, closed her eyes, and dropped off. The next night it happened again.
Same time. Those twenty-nine notes from the living room . . . then silence . . . then down to Abra’s
room and finding her awake. Not fussing, not even sucking her bink, just looking at us through the
bars of her crib. Then off to sleep.”
“This is the truth,” John said. Not really questioning, only wanting to get it straight. “You’re not
pulling my leg.”
David didn’t smile. “Not even twitching the cuff of your pants.”
John turned to Chetta. “Have you heard it yourself ?”
“No. Let David finish.”
“We got a couple of nights off, and . . . you know how you say that the secret of successful
parenting is always make a plan?”
“Sure.” This was John Dalton’s chief sermon to new parents. How are you going to handle night
feedings? Draw up a schedule so someone’s always on call and no one gets too ragged. How are you
going to handle bathing and feeding and dressing and playtime so the kid has a regular—and hence
comforting—routine? Draw up a schedule. Make a plan. Do you know how to handle an emergency?
Anything from a collapsed crib to a choking incident? If you make a plan, you will, and nineteen
times out of twenty, things will turn out fine.
“So that’s what we did. For the next three nights I slept on the sofa right across from the piano. On
the third night the music started just as I was snugging down for the night. The cover on the Vogel
was closed, so I hustled over and raised it. The keys weren’t moving. Which didn’t surprise me much,
because I could tell the music wasn’t coming from the piano.”
“Beg pardon?”
“It was coming from above it. From thin air. By then, Lucy was in Abra’s room. The other times we
hadn’t said anything, we were too stunned, but this time she was ready. She told Abra to play it again.
There was a little pause . . . and then she did. I was standing so close I almost could have snatched
those notes out of the air.”
Silence in John Dalton’s office. He had stopped writing on the pad. Chetta was looking at him
gravely. At last he said, “Is this still going on?”
“No. Lucy took Abra on her lap and told her not to play anymore at night, because we couldn’t
sleep. And that was the end of it.” He paused to consider. “Almost the end. Once, about three weeks
later, we heard the music again, but very soft and coming from upstairs this time. From her room.”