Page 78 of The Sound of Harmony

But Kendrick had already made the choice for her. “Enjoy your time with your sister. I’ll be back before you know it.”

Emma watched him go, then whipped her head back to Gwendolyn. “Did you have to do that?”

“What did I do?”

Emma sucked up several gulps of her latte so she wouldn’t yell at her sister.

Gwendolyn adjusted her sweater, pulling the shoulders back. “Let me get this straight. You made me wait and now you’re mad at me because your boyfriend wanted eye hooks more than he wanted coffee?”

“I’m mad because you’re acting like a mean girl telling him he can’t sit at the cool kids’ table. Even if he did sit with us, you’d probably ignore him like you did last time.”

Gwendolyn pressed a hand to her chest. “I wanted to catch up with you. This is our thing. This predates Kendrick.”

“I thought you’d be glad that I’m trying to integrate him into our lives.”

“Yeah,” Gwendolyn said. “He’s very bound up in your life.”

Emma lifted a palm. “And that’s bad because…”

“I didn’t say it was bad.” Gwendolyn smeared her finger through a condensation ring on the table. “You should make the most of the time you have.”

Emma crossed her arms. Ordinarily she wouldn’t take the bait. She’d either ignore it or try to change the subject, but Gwendolyn was seriously pissing her off. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Gwendolyn gave her a look of pity. “Come on, weirdo. You know he’s not staying in Cannondale. The minute Kendrick gets a better offer, he’s out of here.”

“I’m not an offer,” Emma spat.

“I mean, I was fine with it at first,” Gwendolyn said.

Emma twisted the straw in her drink. Gwendolyn was never fine with it.

“I thought, hey, he’s a good, safe choice,” Gwendolyn continued. “He’s not a forever kind of guy, but he seemed nice enough, so I thought he’d be a nice diversion. Someone to help you get back into the dating pool without doing too much damage along the way.”

Emma slapped her half-finished latte onto the table. She jumped to her feet, slinging her purse over her shoulder. “I should go.”

Gwendolyn caught her wrist. “Please don’t run after Kendrick. You’re not that girl anymore. You’re better than that.”

Emma shifted from foot to foot. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, let the man shop.” Gwendolyn tilted her body away. Her thumb traced a worried line across the top of her fingers. “Without you.”

Emma looked down at her sister in her impeccable outfit and her pearls, thinking how out of place she looked among the hungover students wearing yesterday’s clothes and women with yoga hair. But Gwendolyn always dressed up for their coffee dates as if they were the most important thing on her calendar.

And when she asked Emma not to chase after Kendrick, she wasn’t talking about the hardware store.

Emma sat back down and took Gwendolyn’s hand in hers, twining their fingers together. “My life is here,” she said. “You’re here. I’m not leaving you, weirdo.”

Gwendolyn squeezed her hand but didn’t answer.

“Kendrick quit his orchestra,” Emma said. “He stays home and composes music. He likes Cannondale. He has family here. He’s settling in.”

“Look at him.” Gwendolyn jerked her chin toward the window, where Kendrick was walking toward them carrying a brown bag from Raymond’s Hardware. His long strides had lightness to them, while the fingers of his left hand moved up and down. He was probably writing flute music in his head.

“Really look,” Gwendolyn insisted. “I know itchy feet when I see them, and that man has had one foot out the door from the moment he arrived.”

The Columbus Philharmonic Orchestra sounded wonderful. And Kendrick wasn’t just thinking that because they were playing his composition, or because Dennison Umaru ran masterful rehearsals.

Kendrick sat in a few times a week to listen and make corrections if there was anything in the score that needed amending. Sometimes things in real life didn’t sound the way they’d sounded in his head when he was composing and the next few weeks were all about making small changes, to fine-tune the piece to perfection, or as close as they could get. No piece was ever truly finished. It was always an ongoing conversation between composer, conductor, and orchestra.