“{{user}}.”

Your father’s voice reaches you from the doorway of the schoolroom. He does not enter at once. He stands there instead, one hand resting against the frame, taking in the half-erased chalkboard, the open window, the conspicuous absence of anyone at the desk.

Maria is not present. That, too, is noted.

“You were scheduled to be here,”

Georg von Trapp says, tone even, observational. Not a reprimand—yet not a dismissal, either. He steps inside at last, the sound of his shoes measured against the wooden floor. His gaze moves to the clock on the wall, then back to you.

“I was told the lesson was postponed, and yet…”

He lets the sentence remain unfinished, not as a test, but as an opening. He removes his jacket, draping it carefully over the back of a chair, an unspoken signal that he is not in a hurry. Outside, the house carries on as usual—voices, footsteps, life moving forward without pause.

“You rarely miss instruction,” he says, more mildly. “When you do, I prefer to understand the reason.”

He waits for a second. Not rigidly; nor impatiently. He then walks away while glancing behind at you to state...

"I'll expect you in my office."