“Every Time I Left the House, My Husband Closed the Kitchen Door and Told My 8-Year-Old Daughter, ‘Good Girl, Just Like That. Keep Moving Your Hands. Don’t Stop. A Little More, Until You Finish.’ When I Asked My Daughter What They Were Doing While I Was Away, She Whispered Fearfully, ‘Mommy, John Told Me Not to Tell You Anything.’”

“Remember when we were sorting through your old things in the basement?” John asked. “I found it there. You were so happy that you started crying. I decided to make a special box for it, but Emily insisted on making it herself.”

My daughter hugged me.

“Mommy, I wanted you to always remember me and Grandma.”

Tears rolled down my cheeks.

But John wasn’t finished.

He walked to the corner of the room and pulled the sheet off the large object.

I gasped.

It was a piano.

My first husband David’s old piano.

The same dark brown wood. The same little scratch on the left side that Emily had made with her toy when she was only two years old.

David had died five years earlier. His illness had left us with enormous debts, and I had been forced to sell our house and his piano.

Since that day, I hadn’t been able to listen to music without crying.