Page 37 of Echoes of a Silent Song

“I’m glad I could help.”Standard collaborative pianist response.

“Me too,” he replied.“You have no idea.I could buy you a thousand coffees and I’d still be in your debt.”

Callum’s computer dinged with an email notification.He turnedaway to check it, and Blair could breathe again.A second later, her phone buzzed, and she pulled it from her purse.A text from Joy.

Enjoying your coffee?

Yes.Did you put him up to this?

Nope.He asked yesterday.Completely on his own.

He says I inspired a piece he’s working on.

LOL.My spidey sense tells me he’s inspired to do more than just write music.

Joy had punctuated her last text with some grinning emojis.Blair texted back an eye-roll emoji of her own and set the phone down.

“Looks like we’ve got our assignments for Difference Makers Day,” Callum remarked.

“Yeah?”Blair clicked into her email and scanned the missive from Cashman.Peggy Sue Weldon, 621 North Court Street ...Peterson High alum ...recent widow ...yard work, painting both exterior and interior ...

“Do you know Peggy Sue Weldon?”Callum asked, and Blair turned to face him.

“Not well, but we’ve met.Why?Is that where your group is going?”

Callum reached for his coffee.“Seems that way.”

“Huh.So’s mine.”

“Guess she needs quite a bit of help.”

“Makes sense.The email said she’s a recent widow.If she’s who I think she is, her husband was quite the handyman.”Blair scrolled through the email.“Hey, since we’re going to the same place anyway, I can superviseyour group if you don’t want to mess with this.Call in sick.I won’t tell anyone.”

Callum frowned at her.“You think I can’t handle it?”

“No, I just think you don’twantto handle it.I highly doubt you did this sort of thing directing professional choirs in Boston.”

“You’re right.I didn’t,” he replied evenly.“But I wish we had.”

She studied him.“I’m sorry?”

“My high school choir director said she wanted us to be good singers and good musicians, but more than that, she wanted us to be good humans.‘Most of you aren’t going into music as a profession,’ she always said, ‘but you are all members of the human race, so I’m going to do everything in my power to make you good ones.’”He chuckled.“I can still hear her voice like it was yesterday.So as long as I’m here, whatever influence I have on these kids, I’d like to make them better people than they were before I got here.So, yes, I’m all in on Difference Makers Day.I’ll be there with bells on.”

Just what had they put in his coffee at Teddy’s?Who was this cheerful, unselfish person, and what had he done with the grumpy Callum Knight she knew and didn’t love?

“Are you sure?”she asked.

“Of course I’m sure.You all have a good community here.Solid.Close-knit.You don’t get that kind of thing in places like Boston.”He glanced at the clock on the wall behind her, then reached for his iPad and stood.“It’s a nice change of pace.See you in there?”

She nodded, and he strode past, leaving a hint of cologne in his wake.

Still a couple of minutes before kids started coming in.She had time to savor a few more sips of coffee.

A nice change of pace indeed.All the way around.

Chapter Fifteen

STRIPES OFsage-green paint spread from Blair’s roller onto Peggy Sue Weldon’s living room wall—not a color Blair herself would have chosen, necessarily, but a vast improvement over the original washed-out pink.The tarp beneath her bare feet crackled with her every step, and the aroma of paint permeated the entire room, along with mercifully quiet strains of the Top 40 radio station the students in her group had agreed to in a semi-grudging compromise.