sloping roofs, reminding her of her Scandinavian heritage.
Her surname, Rask, was Danish, but according to her mother, she’d come from a place filled with Norwegians, Swedes, Finns and Icelanders along with the original Chinook peoples. When Ester rarely did talk about “home,” to Desi’s ears it sounded like a mythical place, perhaps a figment of her mother’s dreams, someplace she embellished to feed the imagination of her young daughter. This vista seemed to prove the point. It did almost look mythical.
Her mother had run away from an idyllic, lost-in-time town called Heartlandia. Or Hjartalanda, as the welcome sign at the edge of town said. She’d scoffed when she’d read the slogan beneath: Find Your Home in Heartlandia.
Was it possible? Could a quaint town fill up that huge hole inside her?
She headed up the stairs to her room. Seeing her grandmother again was only half of the reason for this trip to Oregon. The other half was her father.
A couple of hours later, after doing research on her laptop, Desi’s stomach growled. She wandered down to the kitchen, searching for food, but instead found Gerda home and fumbling with a rubber opener and a stubborn jar.
“Let me get that for you,” she said.
With a look of defeat in her eyes, Gerda handed over the jar. “My arthritis is giving me fits today.” She rubbed her hands and grimaced. “Guess I better start making phone calls and cancel tomorrow’s piano lessons.”
“How many students do you have lined up?”
“Four. I give lessons from two to six on Tuesdays and Thursdays since I do the part-time mayoral work on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.”
“All kids?”
Gerda nodded while searching the cupboard, looking at medicine bottles one by one until she found what she wanted.
“Any advanced students?”
“Oh, heavens, no. They’re all beginners in book one or two.” She shook out a couple of pills into the palm of her hand. “The next generation of great talent, as I tell their parents.”
“Why don’t you let me take over for you?”
“I couldn’t ask you to do that,” she said, filling a small glass with water and popping the pills into her mouth.
“I’m offering. It’s the least I can do since you’re letting me stay here as long as I want.”
Gerda folded her arms, her eyes nearly twinkling. “That would be wonderful.”
* * *
At five o’clock the next afternoon, a timid tap at the front door let Desi know the last student had shown up. Gerda had been so impressed with Desi’s teaching style, she’d dropped out of sight after the beginning of the four-o’clock lesson. Desi suspected it was to take a nap, as she’d been yawning throughout most of the last lesson.
Desi opened the door and found a towheaded boy with bright blue eyes, who was a little chunky around the middle. “Hi! Are you Steven?”
He nodded hesitantly. “Is Mrs. Rask here? It’s time for my lesson.” He waved three piano primer books like a fan.
“I’m substituting for Mrs. Rask today. She’s my grandmother.”
His eyes grew to the size of quarters. “You are? Wow. You don’t look like her. You’re pretty.”
She laughed. The boy was already a charmer. Looked as though that Kent guy needed to take a few lessons from his son.
Last night Gerda had filled in Desi on all of the students. Steven was eight and showed potential, but he didn’t put in enough effort to make much progress. Her job would be to light a fire in him for the joy of music. Tall order for a substitute.
The boy seemed tall for his age, and remembering his gigantic father, she understood why. Soon, when the growth spurts started, Steven would probably outgrow his chubbiness as she had when she was around that age.
Desi walked Steven to the piano, pulled out the bench and placed one candy where the boy could see it. “That’s for after you show me your written theory homework.”
He gulped. “Uh.” He screwed up his face, making a bundle of tiny lines crisscross over his tiny nose. “I think I forgot to do it.”
She bit back her smile, not wanting to let his cuteness get him off the hook. She subtly moved the candy back to the bowl and opened his book. “Well, then we’ll work on it together, okay?”
The fill-in questions for note names and the staffs to practice making treble and bass clefs went by quickly with her guidance, and he brightened up. She put two shiny stickers on the pages, and he grinned.
Desi took the same piece of candy from the bowl and returned it to the prior spot. “Are you ready to play for me?”
He nodded, opened his book and dug right in. Clunky and uneven, he banged out the simple notes, but Desi could tell he’d put a lot of effort into his playing. Even to the point of grunting and muttering “uh-oh” or “dang it, I keep messing up.”
She loved looking down at his silky white-blond hair and thought for a boy he smelled pretty good, too. Gerda had been right—Steven showed potential, but he just needed to be nudged. She patiently worked with him, curving his fingers just so, straightening his wrists and gently prodding his spine so he’d sit straighter. When he repeated his slouched posture over and over again, Desi realized he must have liked the way it felt when she walked her fingertips up his spine to get him to sit straight.
“That tickles,” he said after the third reminder, smiling up at her, and her strict teacher persona melted around the edges.
When she explained some of the tricky parts of the song and showed him how to play it, she noticed his head had come to rest on her upper arm. The sweetie liked this attention. Maybe she could use that to make a piano player out of him.
“Would you like to learn a different kind of song?”
“Yeah, this one seems kinda dorky.”
She played a simple basic blues song that used the bottom notes to make it sound snazzy. Steven sat right up, immediately interested in the piece. She found the page in the book so he could see the notes and showed him how to play the first few bars. He obviously liked the rhythm and soon his shoulders moved to the beat. She’d found it—his kind of song.
“I tell you what,” she said. “You live next door, right?”
He nodded, making a serious face, exaggerating his already-deep dimples.
“If you want to come over here after school a couple days during the week, I’ll let you practice on this piano, okay?”
“Will you be here?”
“Sure. I’ll even help you practice if you want.”
“Okay!”
The moment she’d finished carefully writing out his homework, the doorbell rang, and she jumped up to open it.
