Elizabeth Parker's reflection on her experience as a musician educator working with children in an urban non-profit context is an uncomfortable read for me. In a courageous act, Parker makes public her private misgivings about her past experience and allows scrutiny of them in the form of two public commentaries as well as the private musings of "ACT" readers. The author offers this commentary from her position as a white, female, middle-aged academic who is not "native" in critical theory territory. Using Parker's piece as "point of entry text" (Kincheloe & Berry 2004), Benedict provides an adept and thorough reading of Parker's reflection through the multiple lenses and lessons of critical theory. Benedict threads through problematic matters of agency, ownership, legitimation, race, class, hierarchies of control, and constructions of children and childhood, thereby providing rich ground for further thought. As the author considers Parker's piece she realizes that she is complicit in Parker's troubles, not because she failed to critique or theorize, but because she failed to act. Parker's piece, and the author's actions, are incomplete--partial, deficient, unfinished. The author begins "the interpretive act (of) making sense of complexity" by peeling through layers of Parker's reflection and asking questions that arise from incomplete information in "the place in between" them. (Contains 5 notes.)