A crack was enough.
Catherine’s heart jumped, not with fear this time, but with possibility.
Christine followed her gaze and went rigid. “Catherine… no. If they catch us—”
“If we don’t try,” Catherine said quietly, “we freeze.”
She cupped Christine’s face, thumbs brushing rainwater away. “Mama said our voices were special.”
Christine’s lips trembled. “Mama said a lot of things to keep us from being scared.”
“She wasn’t lying,” Catherine said, surprised by how fiercely she believed it in that moment. “Come on.”
They moved along the wall, staying low, slipping behind the wet bushes. The side door breathed warm air into the cold like a living thing. Catherine pushed it gently.
Heat spilled out.
For a second, Catherine almost cried right there because warmth felt like a miracle you weren’t supposed to touch with dirty hands.
Inside, the hallway was plain. White walls. Utility lights. The hidden veins of the theater, where workers moved and nobody wore diamonds.
They crept forward, shoes squeaking softly. Catherine listened for footsteps, for yelling, for the end of their courage.
Instead she heard instruments tuning. The delicate whine of strings. The soft thump of a drum. A piano note, closer now, like a heartbeat inside the building.
Then the hallway opened into the backstage area.
Catherine stopped so fast Christine nearly bumped into her.
The backstage looked like organized chaos: black curtains, metal stands, cables snaking along the floor, workers in headsets moving with practiced urgency. Instruments waited in cases like sleeping animals.
And in the center, gleaming under work lights, sat a grand piano.
It was black and polished, so shiny it held reflections like a lake holds the sky.
Catherine stared at it as if it were a doorway.
She remembered their warehouse piano. Half the keys stuck. One octave always sounded like it was coughing. But Mama had taught them on it anyway, sitting between them, tapping rhythm with her fingers, singing low so the walls wouldn’t complain.
