The Gathering

What Remains

XVIII. What Remains

The Wilds' studio occupied the largest of the basement chambers. A precise recreation of their Nashville workspace from 1995 to 2010. Down to the scratch on the Neumann U87 that Lora had made during an enthusiastic performance of "The Selkie's Promise" in 2003.

The room smelled of old vinyl and magnetic tape. Warm air from the electronics. Dust settled on everything. The hybrid configuration made no temporal sense. Analog equipment from three decades coexisted with digital interfaces that shouldn't have been manufactured yet. Everything worked together seamlessly.

Mia sat cross-legged on the floor beside an open filing cabinet. Papers spread around her in concentric rings like a ritual pattern. Her shoulders curved inward. Her hands moved slowly over the pages. Touching edges without lifting them.

"These were supposed to be gone," Mia said. Not looking up.

She held a sheet of staff paper covered in her own handwriting. The edges were soft with age. Annotations for a track they'd never finished. Interrupted by David's death.

"The fire took everything. Everything in David's studio. I watched it burn from the ambulance."

She paused.

"They made me watch."

She traced the margin notes. David's handwriting. The slanted capitals he used for technical comments, the cramped lowercase for everything else. One annotation read: M—trust the silence here. Let them ache.

Four years since she had seen these words. Four years since she had heard his voice saying them, patient and certain, while she argued that the bridge needed more.

He had been right. He was always right about the silences.

Lora abandoned the magnetic tape recorders and crossed to sit beside her sister. She said nothing. Just rested her shoulder against Mia's.

Lora's eyes moved to a folder half-hidden beneath the filing cabinet. Brass-tabbed. Thomas's system. She pulled it free.

Sheet music. "Round Midnight." His penciled fingerings covered the margins. Arrows marked where the trumpet should breathe. At the bottom of the first page, in his careful hand: For L—play this one slow. We have time.

They had not had time. But she kept the folder in her lap, unopened, and did not correct him.

Sarah stood near the doorway. She was witnessing something private. She stepped backward.

"Stay," Mia said. Still not looking up. "You're part of this now."

"I'm just—"

"You drove us here. You made the coffee. You didn't ask stupid questions when Emma started talking about cellular degradation rates."

Mia raised her head. Met Sarah's eyes without blinking.

"And you just told us your parents exist because we played a song."

Sarah's cheeks went warm. The confession had slipped out before she could stop it. A family story she'd grown up hearing. Never quite believing. Now pressing against her chest when faced with the impossible women from her parents' mythology.

"The jazz standard," Lora said quietly. "'Someone to Watch Over Me.' 1987. We performed it at Tindaloo when your father's café was called something else."

"The Wanderer's Rest," Sarah supplied automatically. "Before Grandfather bought it from the previous owner."

"Philip was there?"

"He was twenty-two. Working the bar. Mom came in with friends from Miskatonic. She hated jazz."

Sarah's mouth quirked.

"Dad bet her that if she stayed through one more song, he'd never play Gershwin in the café again. You started singing before she could leave."

Mia and Lora exchanged one of their wordless glances. The kind that carried entire conversations between them.

"She stayed," Lora said. It wasn't a question.

"Three hours. Dad proposed six months later. He said—"

Sarah hesitated, then continued.

"He said Mom was crying by the end of the first verse. And she never cried. He knew right then. That whatever made her feel that much, he wanted to feel it too."

No one spoke. The tape reels turned slowly on the wall. Click. Click. Reflecting light.

Mia set down the papers she'd been holding. Rose to her feet. She moved without visible effort. Weight shifting from sitting to standing in a single motion. She crossed to Sarah and took both her hands. Her fingers were cool. Dry. Unexpectedly strong.

"Your mother," Mia said. "What was her name?"

"Catherine. Catherine Reed before she married Dad."

"Cat Reed." Mia's chin lifted. The corners of her mouth pulled back. "Lora, do you remember Cat Reed?"

"Economics department. Always sat in the back corner. Always ordered the same thing—"

"Black coffee and honey cake. And she judged the entire room for being insufficiently serious."

Mia laughed. The sound sharp in the studio's padded silence.

"We made it our mission to make her smile."

"Never succeeded," Lora added. "Until that night."

Sarah stared at them. "You remember her? Specifically?"

"Darling girl." Mia squeezed her hands. "We remember everyone who ever listened like she did. The ones who fought against feeling something and lost. Those are the performances that matter."

Lora had joined them now. She placed a hand on Sarah's shoulder. The weight was warm through the fabric of her shirt.

"So yes. You exist because we sang. But we also sang because people like your mother needed to hear it. The causality goes both directions."

"Which means," Mia continued, her eyes narrowing with something between mischief and calculation, "you're not just useful. You're family. Of a sort. The extended, complicated, music-makes-us-real kind of family."

Sarah's hands tightened around Mia's. She released them.

"I don't—" she started.

"You don't have to do anything," Lora said gently. "Just be here. Help if you want. Explore if you're curious. Emma and Alice are upstairs investigating whatever Emma investigates. Probably running electromagnetic scans of the wallpaper or something equally Emma-ish."

"We," Mia said, gesturing at the studio around them, "have ghosts to sort through. Papers that shouldn't exist. Equipment that died with David and Thomas but stands here anyway."

She looked at her sister.

"It's going to take a while."

"If you want to study the other rooms," Lora offered, "you're welcome. The three generic studios at the end of the corridor. We don't know what those are for. There might be an attic. This house doesn't follow normal rules about space."

Sarah nodded slowly. "I could do that. Survey the unused areas. Take notes."

"Perfect." Mia released her hands but held her gaze a moment longer. "One condition."

"What?"

"Letters. If you find any personal letters—envelopes, folded papers, anything addressed to anyone—don't open them. Bring them to us."

"Of course."

"Everything else is fair game. Documents, books, equipment, whatever the house decided to provide. But letters—"

Mia's voice roughened. Her hands trembled slightly.

"Letters are for the people they were written to. Or their kin."

Sarah understood then. The papers Mia had been studying weren't just working notes. Somewhere in those piles were David's last words. Or Thomas's. Communications the sisters thought were lost forever. Resurrected by whatever force had built this place.

"I'll bring you anything sealed," Sarah promised. "Anything personal."

"Good girl."

Mia patted her cheek. The gesture quick. Proprietary. Oddly comforting from someone who appeared nineteen.

"Now go. Be useful. Find something interesting. We need good news when we surface from—"

She gestured at the scattered papers.

"—all of this."

Sarah retreated to the corridor. Closed the studio door softly behind her. Through the wood, she could hear Mia's voice come through, thick with grief.

"Lora, look. Look at this one. It's the letter he wrote when he couldn't—"

The rest was lost to distance.