This didn’t bother him. He knew predictions were pointless, and besides, he could barely understand the past. These days, all he could say for sure was that he was ordinary in a world that loved the extraordinary, and the realization left him with a vague feeling of disappointment at the life he’d led. But what could he do? Unlike Kim, who’d been outgoing and gregarious, he’d always been more reticent and blended into crowds. Though he had certain talents as a musician and composer, he lacked the charisma or showmanship or whatever it was that made a performer stand out. At times, even he admitted that he’d been more an observer of the world than a participant in it, and in moments of painful honesty, he sometimes believed he was a failure in all that was important. He was forty-eight years old. His marriage had ended, his daughter avoided him, and his son was growing up without him. Thinking back, he knew he had no one to blame but himself, and more than anything, this was what he wanted to know: Was it still possible for someone like him to experience the presence of God?

Ten years ago, he could never have imagined wondering about such a thing. Two years, even. But middle age, he sometimes thought, had made him as reflective as a mirror. Though he’d once believed that the answer lay somehow in the music he created, he suspected now that he’d been mistaken. The more he thought about it, the more he’d come to realize that for him, music had always been a movement away from reality rather than a means of living in it more deeply. He might have experienced passion and catharsis in the works of Tchaikovsky or felt a sense of accomplishment when he’d written sonatas of his own, but he now knew that burying himself in music had less to do with God than a selfish desire to escape.

He now believed that the real answer lay somewhere in the nexus of love he felt for his children, in the ache he experienced when he woke in the quiet house and realized they weren’t here. But even then, he knew there was something more.