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She closed the curtain. Not her problem tonight, when she had enough things of her own to worry about.
Chapter 10
“Why do we have to go to the old-people place again?” Carter asked as Hannah pulled into the parking lot at the Shelter Inn a few days later.
She smiled, even as a faint thread of tension tugged through her. Between lesson plans, rehearsals and shuttling Morgan’s kids everywhere they needed to go, she wasn’t quite sure how she was going to keep all the balls in the air much longer. Somehow, she would. She always managed.
“You know how I do a music therapy class at your school?” she said. “I do the same thing here at the Shelter Inn.”
“But they’re old people,” Riley said from the back seat. “They don’t need to work on their speech and stuff.”
Hannah bit back a laugh. Clearly Riley had never met Bud Roundy, who swore like a longshoreman whenever his crossword puzzle didn’t cooperate.
“No, but music helps with so many things. It can help with memory, with balance, with mood. People feel less lonely and anxious when they create music together. It even helps some of them sleep better. Plus there’s a group of residents who will be performing at the same concert where you two will be singing and we need to practice.”
“What can we do while you’re singing with the old people?” Carter asked.
“Fortunately, my friend McKenna said she would love to have you come to her place. She runs the Shelter Inn and lives there too with her family. I think you know her daughters, Nora and Hazel.”
“Hazel is my friend,” Riley said, her voice brightening instantly as she bounced in her seat. “We’re in the same reading group. She has the coolest fairy backpack.”
“Perfect. I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time with them.”
“Do they have any kids I can play with?” Carter asked.
“You can play with us,” Riley said promptly, leaning over to give his sleeve an affectionate tug.
Warmth pricked behind Hannah’s eyes. For all the chaos of their lives right now, Riley had been unfailingly sweet with her younger brother. Morgan was doing something very right with these children.
Only a few weeks from the winter solstice and the shortest day of the year, the sun had already slipped below the mountains. A dusky twilight turned everything a soft, magical blue as they walked toward the entrance of the retirement community, the air sharp with cold and the faint smell of woodsmoke.
An army of inflatables kept watch across the front lawn—snowmen, penguins, a slightly wilted Santa—and Hannah pushed her cart of instruments and supplies past a gigantic inflatable reindeer whose head bobbed with every gust of wind.
“That snowman looks creepy,” Riley said, eyeing a towering Frosty with a grin almost as wide as his entire face. “Like he’s going to sneak up behind you and eat your brain or something.”
“Riley.” Hannah tried to sound stern, but a laugh slipped out anyway. “He’s made of vinyl and air. I think we’re safe.”
She didn’t love inflatables herself, but she found it charming that McKenna and her Aunt Liz, who ran the Shelter Inn, allowed residents to decorate with items they had brought along after downsizing and leaving their respective homes to move here. Every wobbling snowman and lopsided reindeer was a tiny piece of someone’s story.
After settling the children in McKenna’s comfortable apartment, where the other woman and her older sister Natalie had grown up, back when the property was a small exclusive hotel, Hannah headed back down the hall, pushing her cart filled with handbells, shakers and sheet music into the recreation room.
She came in just in time to hear Edgar Wilcox loudly insisting he’d once sung backup for Willie Nelson.
“You sang backup for Willie Nelson the same way I once dated George Strait,” Birdie Lovell scoffed. “In your dreams.”
“It wasn’t Willie Nelson,” Bud put in. “It was the Willie Nelson impersonator at the fair.”
“Details,” Edgar said, winking at Hannah. “A fella’s got to keep some mystery.”
Their familiar banter loosened something tight inside her. She loved these people.
“All right, my dears,” she said. “Let’s make some music.”
An hour later, she set down her sheet music and rubbed a faint ache from the back of her neck. “You all sound fantastic. I can tell you’ve been practicing.”
Mabel Mulcahy frowned at the group over the top of her bifocals. “Not as often as we should be. I’ve told them we need to practice every single day if we’re going to get the bells right, but nobody listens to me.”
Of course she had. Mabel had been bossy and particular as long as Hannah had known her. If there was a way to organize, improve or micromanage something, Mabel would find it. Hannah had to remind herself often that underneath the prickles beat a heart that cared deeply.
