As she looked at the keyboard, memories came rushing back to her: practicing in her dorm room with Rob, performing with him on stage, writing the harmonies to his melodies late into the night. That keyboard had become an extension of who she was back then. It was part of her. But now it wasn’t. She should give it away. Someone in their building would probably be thrilled to find it with a Take me! I’m free! sign in the laundry room. It might become part of them; it might help them create memories like hers.

She liked that idea.

But maybe she should play it one last time. Emily picked it up out of its case and brought it into the living room, where she propped it up on the dining table. Then she went back for the cords and plugged them all in—the power cord, the damper pedal. She didn’t have her amp anymore. There was a pair of headphones she could’ve plugged in, but she decided against it. Instead, she told Alexa to stop playing Ed Sheeran.

The apartment went silent.

Emily was holding her breath when she flicked the keyboard on, worried all at once that it wouldn’t work. But the green light started to glow, and Emily pressed down on middle C. The keyboard was top of the line, with perfectly weighted keys and a beautiful, resonant sound. She ran her fingers up it in a scale, as if she had to wake it up, get the keyboard to clear its throat before she could really start playing.

She tried a few chords. Then found some books to adjust the height of the keyboard. And she began to play. First it was just some arpeggios. Then she fingered the melody of the Ed Sheeran song she’d just turned off. Everyone but Rob had always been impressed by how easily Emily could hear a melody and then play it back afterward. Rob hadn’t been impressed because he could do it, too. “I love that you’re a member of the club,” he’d said, when she’d played a new melody he’d just sung, soon after he’d bought her the keyboard in college.

From Ed Sheeran, she started playing their old medley, the finale of her and Rob’s shows, the pièce de résistance, a review in their college paper had called it after going to one of their performances. Emily hadn’t thought about that review in years. Had locked it away with the rest of her memories. But now, like the music, which had been living inside her, waiting to be reawakened, it came back. Rob Barnes and Emily Solomon play music together like it’s what they were born to do.