The second part
They opened the loose seam with a small pair of scissors and found a narrow envelope tucked between the lining and the shell. Inside were two pages of handwritten music. The first carried Mira's name. The second was labeled for Arun, with an impatient note asking him to stop changing the ending. He laughed before he could prevent it.
The pages belonged to a duet they had written as teenagers. Arun remembered the disagreement with embarrassing clarity. Mira wanted the last phrase to remain unresolved; he wanted a grand finish that would make the neighbors applaud. On the day she left, they had argued over the music instead of saying that they would miss each other. He had spent years remembering the argument as if it were the important part.
June looked again at the parcel note. The paper had been cut from the back of a concert program, leaving half a telephone number beneath a fold. Arun recognized the venue and found its public listing. The manager remembered Elsie, a retired music teacher who had recently donated old teaching materials. With Elsie's permission, he passed along her number.
Elsie explained that she had bought the empty case at a secondhand shop and used it for spare strings. When the lining came loose, she noticed the envelope but left it in place. She thought the community music room might find a use for both. No missing violin, then, and no carefully arranged message from Mira. The case had arrived by ordinary chance. What happened next would have to be Arun's choice.