might want to see who I was,” he said.
My mother held the photo with both hands.
“I do,” she whispered. “I want to know all of it.”
That night, after dinner, my father asked everyone to gather near the workbench.
He held the old wooden music box.
The one I had made at fifteen.
The one he had never managed to fix alone.
Leo stood beside him, practically bouncing.
“We fixed it,” Leo announced.
My father smiled. “He did most of the delicate work.”
“I supervised,” Daniel said.
“You handed me the wrong screwdriver twice,” Leo told him.
Everyone laughed.
My father placed the music box in my hands.
The wood had been sanded smooth. The chipped corner remained, but polished. The carved flower was still uneven. They had not tried to make it perfect.
That mattered.
My father nodded toward the key.
I turned it.This time, the
