I rolled up the door of unit 31, bracing for the worst, 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 Walters 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.
Real particular that no one be added but him, the man had said, and now I understood, my Walter was teaching himself to play in secret, and a shy beginner who also could not keep a surprise had to lock the whole thing away from every ear, including his own blabbing mouth.
For seventeen years, my Walter had tracked down and restored my late mothers piano, the very one I learned on, and had been secretly teaching himself to play it, 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, where you would not hear me stumble, because I wanted to sit you down someday and play you your mamas song. I told the folks to add nobody but me, on account of you know I would have blabbed by Thanksgiving. 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, Walter.
I wept at my mothers piano, restored by my husbands love, a man who taught his stiff old hands to play in secret just to surprise me.
Particular that no one be added, so I would not hear him stumble, and could not spoil the surprise.
I brought that piano 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 Walter gave back to me.
Our granddaughter is learning on it too, on the keys my mother gave me, that Walter brought home. Three generations of music, alive again.
My daughter did not know why I drove out to Route 11. Now she knows her daddy brought the music home. Particular that no one be added, so his surprise would keep and his stumbles stay his own. He gave me back my mothers piano and my own lost song. It plays in my house every day now. I hear him in every note.