I rolled up the door of unit 63, bracing for the worst, and heard, of all things, the faint memory of music, and the light fell on an old upright piano, restored to gleaming beauty, and beside it a stool, sheet music open, and a wall of notes in Bills hand about scales and chords.
I stood in that doorway with my hand pressed to my chest.
I knew that piano. It was my mothers, the one I learned on as a girl, the one we thought was lost when the family home was sold decades ago.
Only came at night, the young man had said, and now I understood, my Bill was teaching himself to play in secret, and a beginner is shy of being heard, so he practiced after dark, out here, where no ears could catch his fumbling.
For sixteen years, my Bill had tracked down and restored my late mothers piano, the very one I learned on, and had been secretly teaching himself to play it, at night, so that someday he could surprise me.
His letter sat on the bench. He wrote: Old girl, you gave up playing when your mama died and her piano was sold, and I watched the music go out of you, and it broke my heart. So I found her piano. Took me years. Had it made good as new. And I have been teaching these clumsy old hands to play, at night where you would not hear me stumble, because I wanted to sit you down someday and play you your mamas song. I never got good enough to dare. But I got the piano home for you. Play it, old girl. Let the music come back. Love, Bill.
I wept at my mothers piano, restored by my husbands love, a man who taught his stiff old hands to play in the dark just to surprise me.
Only at night, so I would not hear him stumble. My Bill had been bringing the music back to my life in secret.
I could not let that piano sit in storage. I brought it home, where my mothers piano belongs, in my own front room.
And I sat down at it, and my fingers, stiff from years away, slowly remembered. I play again now, every day, the music Bill gave back to me. Sometimes I find one of his practice notes tucked in the bench, a clumsy old mans careful diagrams, and I weep and I smile at once.
Our granddaughter is learning on it now too, on the keys my mother gave me, that Bill brought home. Three generations of music, alive again.
My daughter did not know why I drove across town. Now she knows her daddy brought the music home. Only at night, so his surprise would keep and his stumbles would not. He gave me back my mothers piano and my own lost song. It plays in my house every single day now. I hear him in every note.