By the time he got to Grace’s, he was nearly steaming, so when his wet clothes hit the a/c he felt chilled. He took the stairs in leaps. He needed a shower and a nap, but he needed to calm down first. He rang Billy and asked for coffee and lemonade. Then he put the daisy in a glass and the envelope on the desk and looked carefully at it. It was addressed to the Adoption Board, Merrion Square, Dublin, Ireland. In the upper, left-hand corner was the sender’s address: Hilary Barrett, 99 St. Botolph Street, Boston, MA. Postmark: August 21, 1991.

What was the story here? What was the connect? Had there been more than one thing lying in the bottom of the glass sea? Maybe this wasn’t Iris’s. Had the guy fished out the wrong thing?

There was a knock. He opened the door to Billy, who was smiling. Hector was down to his boxers. The tattoo of an eagle on Hector’s right arm caught the sunlight. “Hey, Professor.” Billy put down the lemonade and coffee. “Mrs. Hale said she’d see you later. She hopes you got a ticket for—”

“Of course I did. Two, in fact.” Hector winked.

“Right. She’ll be pleased.”

“Hey. Has the Mrs. Bowen lady returned? I mean, she staying here tonight?”

“No, she hasn’t and yes, she is. I told her about the Mapparium. And I told her where the public library was. She wanted Internet. So maybe—”

“Gotcha. She’s here but not here.” Hector didn’t exactly push Billy out, but he held the door for him and closed it quickly. He drank the lemonade first, then the coffee, then he lay out on the bed, but couldn’t nap. He sat up, lay down again, but still couldn’t nap. His head was buzzing between Sparrow in Summer and Mrs. Bowen. There was no way he was going to be able to sleep.

He woke with a start when a door closed. It was 5:27. The students expected him to join them for special supper at Botolph’s at six.

He shaved, calmed his hair, threw on his blue Hawaiian shirt, the one with the white hibiscus, and bolted downstairs. There was no sign of Grace in the front room. He checked the kitchen. No sign of her there. Nor Billy. Nor Mrs. Bowen. By the side table in the front hall, he found a brown envelope and stuck two tickets inside, scribbled For Your Grace and Mrs. Bowen, and left.

He hurried along West Newton and when he reached the corner, he stopped dead, as if for the first time noticing the street number of Botolph’s restaurant. He’d been coming here for what? Fifteen years or so. Since it opened. But there etched in white fancy numbers was 99, in the glass above the door. What do you know? How many times had he been there? With Grace, with students, with colleagues?

Now he noticed—99.

What it meant he had no idea, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist, he thought, to know something here was of concern to Mrs. Bowen. It was the something troubling her which he’d sensed that morning. He had no words for his thoughts, only feelings, and those feelings in one intense flash of inspiration had already found their way into Sparrow in Summer. But there was more, he was certain.

*   *   *

After a light supper, rambling monologues, sudden silences, and nervous jokes from Casey and Belletti, Hector walked with his students to Titus Sparrow Park. A large audience had already gathered with picnic baskets and rugs and multicolored nylon beach chairs. The summer concerts always began just at twilight. Hector looked around him, at the light tumbling down, disappearing into the trees and across the flowerbeds. Layers of different hues of blue cloaked the sky. Soon, the other musicians would appear and the evening would become magical.

But before the magic could begin, the musicians needed to warm up. Backstage, Hector’s mind was gliding and humming, running through riffs and runs, swings and syncopations. He was bounce-walking up and down, rolling his shoulders, loosening his neck muscles, looking up into the night sky, getting ready for the music, but all the time, playing like a thumb line, was something he wanted to say to the woman named Iris: that blue in all its splendid dynamism was the color of hope. He couldn’t articulate it any better than that. He peeped through the curtains. Grace wasn’t there yet. He’d left reserved seats for her in the front row.

Hector finished his warm-up, then he gathered Belletti and Casey, brought them over to meet the man sitting in the corner cradling his guitar. “And here’s Amos McGee, the one and only. Best bass guitarist there is. Close your eyes when you hear him play and it sounds like a horn has slipped in. Amos, meet Casey and Belletti. And guys … meet Amos.”

“Hey, kids, welcome aboard,” Amos said. He tipped his baseball cap back on his head one second and lowered it again. He stood up then and walked out on the stage. The clapping began right away because Amos McGee was a legend in Boston. His name stretched back into the days when Dizzy Gillespie played in the South End. In his Red Sox cap, he strode smooth and cool, paused a moment, and then did his customary pirouette.

The rumble of applause rose up from the grass into the gloaming sky. Hector stepped to the microphone and introduced the band. “Mr. Amos McGee, you all know.” More applause. Amos bowed just slightly, his hands moving over his guitar. “And, here, now, are two of Berklee’s finest, Mossy Casey and Gino Belletti, who’ll back up Amos and maybe … let’s see how it flies … maybe they’ll have a riff or two of their own—to take us higher.”

He paused for effect, let the evening gather its breath. “Ladies and gentlemen, on this bee … u … ti … full night, I give you, Sparrow in Summer.”

Hector sat down, summoned that still place inside, and then broke it open, playing the black and white notes fast and free, sounding like a bird jam, like a sparrow sings. Sharp notes. A succession of warbles and trills. Chimp. Tsip. Tsip. Tsip. He nodded to Amos and his thumping and plucking sounded like the repeated chattering of a sparrow Hector had imagined. Then he and Amos held back while Casey and Belletti stepped forward, showcasing the slap bass improvisation they’d worked on earlier.

Hector looked out at the crowd and breathed it all in. At the piano he was fully alive, and the thing that was happening inside him fused with the music and he knew he was playing better than he had in a long time, and he looked up into the dark blue sky and he thought, Man, this is a little like paradise, this is jazz as it is in heaven, sound upon sound with no boundary, mingling, colliding, harmonizing, blending, melding, balancing, clashing, fusing. An acoustic Arcadia, smooth and easy, head-buzzing, heart-stopping, and goddamn transformative.

He looked out and there was Grace. And, sitting right beside her, some kind of illumination, was Iris Bowen. She looked up at him with the saddest-looking eyes he’d ever seen. And he knew. He knew right then with perfect clarity that this was the something that had changed, had changed utterly, and although he still didn’t have the words for it, he had the notes.

And, for Iris Bowen, he played.

Later, after the final encore, after the sparrow had flown, but still in the high of performance, still in that particular mindscape that jazz brings, out of the seeming chaos of chords and rhythms to a place of harmony where things fit together and the world seems to make better sense—or at least it did for Hector—he went back and found Grace sitting in the kitchen. It was after midnight.

“Hello, Your Grace.” He bowed exuberantly and looked around expectantly.

“Hector. Hector. Hector. That was wonderful.” She jumped up and hugged him. “So wonderful, right? I’m so proud. I’m sitting here thinking about how Bob would have loved it, too. Yes?”

“Yeah, Grace. Thanks. I’m flying high.”

“Something to drink?”

“No. No. I’m buzzing.”

They stood silently for a few moments; Hector judging whether he could mention Mrs. Bowen.