My sister's cello case arrived Tuesday. She took the instrument when she vanished ten years ago. It came by courier, a lavender ribbon tied around the handle—the same shade as the wild lavender that grew beneath her window, the flowers we'd braid into crowns during summer afternoons. When I lifted the lid, the scent deepened, as if those summers had been sealed inside. There lay Lila's favorite bow, the one with the dragon carved into the frog, its wooden eyes catching light like amber. Beneath it, a sheaf of yellowed sheet music - Bach's Suite No. 1 in G Major, the pages wrinkled and torn, the Prelude covered in her frantic markings. The same music she was practicing the night she disappeared, the measures she couldn't master.
"Something's off with this piece," she said that last night, her voice tight with frustration. "It's like it wants something from me."
"It's just Bach," I replied through our shared wall. "Not a demon."
I heard her laugh. "Maybe there's not much difference," she said. Her eyes were serious when I peered into her room.
We grew up in a narrow brownstone, bedrooms sharing a wall thin as parchment. At night, we pressed our palms against the plaster, pretending we could feel each other's heartbeats through the paint. "Your heart's playing allegro tonight," she'd whisper. "Slow down, conductor." I fell asleep to her breathing, the rhythm of her presence steady as moonlight through gauze.
At twelve, Lila took up the cello. The first weeks were screeching strings and fumbling fingers, but I never minded. "Practice makes perfect," I'd call through the wall.
"Only if you're practicing perfectly," she replied, our childhood mantra.
She played with determination, brow furrowed exactly like mine when I concentrated, whispering to the instrument like a confidante. I conducted silently through the wall, matching her rhythms, humming as she worked through scales.
Over time, her playing mellowed, notes languid like honey and woodsmoke. The cello seemed to shape itself to her body, grain lines flowing like frozen music, f-holes curved like eyes watching. Lila swayed with the music, eyes closed, a slight smile playing at her lips as she tucked loose strands of hair behind her ear—a gesture we shared.
She spent hours cloistered, sheet music rustling, strings singing somber songs. Each note seemed to paint shadows in the air, deep purples and midnight blues swirling and twirling. I pressed my ear to the wall, straining to unravel the emotions in each measure. The deeper notes rumbled through the floorboards, as if the building itself was humming.
"Do you ever feel like the music is watching you?" she asked one night when I brought her tea.
"That's just your cello's f-holes," I said. "They look like eyes."
"No, it's something else." She traced the dragon on her bow. "Sometimes I swear it whispers back."
Mother fretted over Lila's obsession. "It's not healthy," she'd mutter at breakfast, watching Lila push food around her plate, humming Bach under her breath. But Dad would shake his head. "Let her be. The girl's got a gift."
And she did. When Lila played, the air paused to listen. The low C string pulsed amber in darkness, harmonics spiraling up like strands of DNA. She won competitions, became the cello prodigy, music in her marrow. By sixteen, she was preparing for conservatory auditions.
But Bach's Suite No. 1 stumped her. For months, Lila grappled with the Prelude, fingers slipping on the fourth position shifts, bow skittering over string crossings. The notes hung like frost, crystalline and sharp enough to cut. I'd hear cursing, the thump of her foot. "It's like trying to catch smoke," she'd say, frustrated tears in her voice. "Every time I think I have it, it slips away."
That autumn night, wind keening like bow strokes across empty strings, Lila's playing turned frantic. The Prelude climbed the stairs, notes sharp as glass. Through the wall, I felt overtones crystallizing in the air, visible as breath in winter. "Lila?" I called out. "Maybe you should take a break."
No answer, just music swelling, cresting, then breaking with a splintering crack.
Silence. A soft thud.
I pushed in. Sheet music scattered the floor like fallen leaves. The air smelled of ozone and, faintly, lavender. Lila and her cello were gone.
A decade passed. Police stopped calling. Dad slept in Lila's bed, grief a second skin. Mom retreated into pills and TV. I left, found a studio across the city, where rain tapped rhythms on windows that sounded nothing like her scales.
I thought I could escape the hole my sister left. But then, her case appeared, trailing whispers of lavender like ghost notes. At first, music played only at night, spectral notes seeping under my door like fog. The melodies grew insistent.
Always the Prelude. Always stopping at the same unresolved phrase. The place Lila never moved past, the moment she disappeared.
I saw her everywhere. A red braid in the grocery aisle. Lavender on the subway. A note in the case, beneath her bow: "Finish it for me." The scent grew stronger each day, as if summer fields bloomed in my apartment.
So I sit with the sheaves of music, Lila's bow in my hand. The dragon writhes in the low light, its wooden eyes holding secrets. I've never played, but my hands know. They find the strings of air, draw out a delicate phrase. The notes taste like honey and woodsmoke on my tongue.
Measure by measure, I stumble through the Prelude. Each note a step closer to Lila, to that autumn night. The air thickens like rosin dust in sunlight. As I near the final measures, a faint hum surrounds me, like a whisper of cello. The room fills with lavender light, deep and rich as the lowest notes.
I reach the end, the part Lila never could. Bow hovering, I draw it across phantom strings in one last haunting note - the flourish she longed to master. The music swells, harmonics spiraling up and up and up, then fades.
Through my tears, I see her. Not like the glimpses before, but solid as memory. A girl with a red braid, tucking hair behind her ear just as she always did. The scent of lavender deepens, the air shimmering with the resonance of that final note.
"Lila?" I whisper, reaching out as we used to through the wall.
She smiles, and our palms meet, warm and real as childhood summers. "Thank you," she says, her voice harmonizing with the lingering overtones. "The piece is complete now. I can rest."
Then she is gone, but not like before. This time, the absence feels right, like the resonant silence after a final note. The music had kept her here, unfinished, but now the piece is complete.
I place Lila's bow in the empty case. In the soft light, the dragon seems to smile, its amber eyes gentle. Though I will never stop missing her, I know she lives on in the music we shared, in every lavender sunset and whispered note. Somewhere, finally free, Lila plays on.
