The record shouldn't have been there. I'm standing in Mrs. Kowalski's driveway on a Saturday morning, surrounded by the usual garage sale garbage—dusty Christmas decorations, a broken blender, romance novels with their spines cracked—when I see it. A vinyl record in a plain white sleeve, no label, just a single word scrawled in faded Sharpie: *VESPER*. "How much?" I ask, holding it up. Mrs. Kowalski squints at it from her folding chair. "That old thing? Take it. Free." Free. The best word in the English language when you're a broke college student surviving on ramen and spite. I should've known better. Back in my dorm room, I slide the record from its sleeve. The vinyl is pristine, impossibly so for something that looks decades old. Side A has a single track marked in that same scratchy handwriting: *"The Last Session."* Side B is blank, just smooth black nothing. My roommate Jade glances over from her bed. "What's that?" "Not sure yet." I place it on the vintage turntable my dad gave me before he died—the only thing of his I kept. "Found it at a garage sale." The needle drops. Static. Then a voice, raw and haunting, fills our cramped room. It's a woman singing without accompaniment, just her voice and the faint sound of breathing. The melody is beautiful and wrong, like something you'd hear in a half-remembered dream. The lyrics are unclear, but they make my chest tight, my eyes sting. "That's incredible," Jade whispers. "Who is it?" "I don't know." The song ends after four minutes. Then the record keeps spinning, but there's only silence. I lift the needle, flip it over. Side B looks blank, but when I hold it to the light, I can see grooves there. Faint, but real. "Try playing it," Jade says. I drop the needle on Side B. Nothing. Just a faint crackling, like the record is trying to speak but can't. That night, I dream about the singer. She's standing in a recording booth, headphones on, tears streaming down her face as she sings. The booth is small, claustrophobic. Someone is watching her through the glass—a shadow of a man with his hand on the controls. She keeps singing even as she cries, even as she mouths the word *help*. I wake up gasping. For the next three days, I can't stop thinking about the record. I google every combination of "Vesper," "last session," and "lost recording" I can think of. Finally, buried in a Reddit thread about obscure music, I find it. *Vesper LaRoux. Singer-songwriter, 1970s. Died in a studio fire before her debut album was released. Legend says she recorded a final session the night she died, but only Side A survived. Side B was destroyed in the fire.* Except I have Side B. Or something that claims to be Side B. The thread includes a link to an article from 1978. There's a grainy photo of Vesper—beautiful, with long dark hair and sad eyes. Below it, a quote from the studio engineer who survived the fire: *"She was recording something that night. Something she said she had to finish before it was too late. I told her we should stop, but she wouldn't listen. Then the fire started, and I couldn't save her."* The engineer's name is listed: *Thomas Crane.* Another search. He's still alive. Eighty-three years old, living in a nursing home two hours from campus. I book a bus ticket before I can talk myself out of it. ---