They were happy and falling in love—with each other, with the music, and with the world. And they carried that feeling of happiness with them through the years that followed, protecting it, nurturing it, and letting it blossom, trying to blot out the darkness.

vi

Until I met your father, the last time I’d played music for an audience was in a piano recital the year I was fourteen. I played Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag.” I flubbed the fingering once, and cringed internally, but no one seemed to notice but me. All the parents and other kids were transfixed, and then broke into cheers and applause when the last note rang out. My parents handed me a bouquet of flowers and took me out for dessert afterward. I remember how filled with happiness I felt—music did that to me, playing the piano did that to me, the audience’s reaction to my song did that to me. I would’ve kept working with my teacher, but my mom—your grandmother—got sicker. And any after-school activities that weren’t school-sponsored weren’t allowed anymore. It was just too difficult for her and my dad. So I stopped my lessons, even though my teacher told me it broke her heart. I kept singing—in the school choir—and I still played at home for my mom, but it wasn’t the same. And then she died the summer before my senior year of high school. After that, I stopped playing completely.

Your father gave music back to me, and it was like it had been waiting, dormant inside me, for something—or someone—to bring it to life. Like a garden, seemingly dead all winter only to bloom, like magic, in the spring. After we’d dated for half a year, after we’d made music together all summer, he asked me to perform with him. It was at a bar downtown, playing some rock-’n’-roll covers. He was on guitar. His roommate was going to play drums. A friend of theirs was on bass. But he needed someone to play keys. Even if I hadn’t wanted to, I would’ve done it for him, but I did want to. The music that he’d awakened inside me made me feel more alive, more real, more grounded than anything else had since your grandmother died. My feelings came out through my fingers—and with your dad, I was able to channel those feelings, not let them take over. When I played I felt like more than me, like I was part of something larger. And so I spent the first two weeks of the fall semester practicing whenever I wasn’t in class.

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