Anger filled her like water from a spout, anger for all her wasted days and years of guilt, when her sin had not been actual so much as imagined. Rage that, compared to what she had suffered as a result of her sin, John, who bore the true shame, had not suffered a thing. She untied her apron and yanked it off over her head, throwing it to the floor. It landed with a soft pflump, but she had already left it behind, striding out into the living room. She saw Jack and Harry ahead of her, walking reluctantly toward Nick and Elissa in the parlor. She passed between them like a speedboat between two ships, and rushed directly to the piano, scarcely noticing Elissa and Nick, who were seated together on the sofa.

The cover over the piano’s keys creaked as she lifted it and pushed it back out of the way. She touched the cool ivory, then surrendered her hands to the Sonata Pathétique—it was still in her mind, after all these years. She did not hear Jack and Harry calling to her, saying, “Mom, Mom, are you all right?”

“Cripes, she must have heard us, Jack!”

And then we knew immed., Elissa would write, much later, in her resurrected diary. Just the look on Dad’s and Uncle Harry’s faces. Grandma coming in that way. (I’d never heard her play before! She’d always said it was something she used to do, before she disc. that she was nothing more or less than Mom & Grandma. & now here she was before us, a livid virtuoso.) N. and I looked at each other with absolute horror, & he pulled his hand from mine, as quickly as one pulls off a Band-Aid to keep the pain sharp and swift. I literally felt my heart exiting my fingertips, cleaving to his hand when he took it away. Absolute and utter disbelief. Grandma’s music like a tirade. I couldn’t take my eyes from N.’s. Heartbreak everywhere. Heartbreak like drowning.

John lifted his head up off the desk when he heard the music. Wilma had not played in years.

So she knows, he thought immediately. They’ve told her. It’s the end.

He leaned his head in his hands a moment, then rose slowly from his chair. He was a little wobbly on his feet to start, and had to lean on the desk to steady himself. It had all been speculation, before, what he might say, what she might do. But now, knowing that she knew what he had done, what he had kept from her these many years, he felt a sudden, certain conviction. He could not face her. He would not. Nor Nick. Nor Elissa, nor the rest of them.