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knows this place, knows the people in it, almost better
than he knows himself. And he knows how this house feels when something is
wrong.
    His stomach lurches, turns. He’s
had stomach troubles so bad that he is saving for an enhancement - although the
doc probably won’t give it, saying reduce the stress instead.
    Sure. When the lawyer is paid,
the experts are paid, the bills are paid. Thank God he doesn’t have to pay for
Madeline’s care. Her parents will do that.
    Although they blame him.
    What did you
do to her? Her father shouted outside the courthouse. She was perfect until she met you .
    The signs
were there, Nils had said more to himself than to her father. The signs were there from the beginning .
    He tries not to worry about this
with his own daughter. They enhanced her intelligence, messed with her mind,
made her better, the doctor said, but the technology isn’t perfect. Did they
enhance her tendency toward perfection, which she inherited from her mother?
Will things show up later that might not have otherwise been there?
    He goes into the kitchen, which
should smell of his mother’s lasagne. Instead, it smells of the morning coffee
and dirty dishes. His mother sits in her favourite kitchen chair, looking old.
Her eyes are red-rimmed.
    She’s been crying.
    “What?” he says. “What?”
    She points to the den. He hurries
in, afraid - what happened to his daughter? His girl? What would he be without
Suze? God, once he didn’t even know her and now he can’t imagine losing her.
    Or he can, really, that’s the
problem. He can, and in those few seconds, filled with the hint of his mother’s
tears, he can imagine life without Suze. And it is beyond bleak.
    Then he sees his father in his
overstuffed chair, arms around Suze. Suze, who is asleep. Suze, whose face is
puffy and red, like it always is when she cries.
    Nils lets out a relieved breath,
then sees the rest of the room. The destroyed wall mount, the scratches on the
side of the old family upright. The overturned table, the broken lamp.
    “What happened?” he asks softly,
so he doesn’t wake his daughter.
    His father looks at him.
Accusing. That’s the look. A look Nils hasn’t seen since he was a teenager. You should’ve known better. What were you thinking? What’s wrong
with you?
    “What happened?” Nils asks again.
    “She says the music’s broken,”
his father says.
    Nils sinks into a chair. “What
does that mean?”
    His father shrugs a single
shoulder, effortlessly, a man who has had practice communicating with a child
in his arms. A sleeping child.
    “She turned on the music, then
started yelling and when we tried to fix it, everything got worse. She did
this. She was screaming and crying and holding her head. What did you do to
her, Nils?”
    Nils stares at his daughter. She
never has tantrums. She’s the best child. But she’s been complaining about
music.
    Music, Madeline’s obsession.
Madeline spent so much money on apps, apps he couldn’t renew with all their
monthly fees - a quarter of his wages in fees, for apps for his daughter.
    “I didn’t do anything,” he says.
And that’s the problem, isn’t it? In a nutshell, as they say. In something
small that will grow into something big.
    Has grown into something big.
    He didn’t do anything. He watched
the enhancement money disappear, but his wife - who used to use enhancements to
remain thin - grew fat. He watched five dollars go away here, fifteen there.
    What did you
buy? he would ask her.
    Lattes ,
she’d snap.
    Lattes.
    She lied. She bought music apps. Inappropriate
apps. Apps for lounge singers, who had to know every single request from every
single patron. Apps for garage bands, who needed to learn how to play. Apps on
music theory. Music appreciation. And sight-reading.
    He’d come home, and Madeline would
be hunched over the piano, telling Suze to try again. Try. Make
it sound right the first time . With no music in front of her.
    Make it sound
right .
    He