“I wasn’t sure you’d want to play tonight,” I said. “Or if you’d want company.”

He tucked a gloved finger beneath my chin, tilting my face to his mask. “How could I stay away when my solace, my heart, is here?”

I smiled in spite of both of our aching and, taking his hand in mine, turned to draw him to our preferred place of retreat—of respite.

“So that means you’re still up for teaching me this crazy middle part, right?”

I seated myself at my super-early and super-enormous Christmas present—the piano Dad had, at my behest, restored.

Eager to begin, my hands went to the keys. Starting with that low booming A that pounded like a heartbeat, I then layered in the chords that spoke of approaching doom. In other words, my favorite part.

Faltering in the same place I had yesterday, and the day before, I began again.

“That would be good,” Erik said, taking his place next to me. “If it wasn’t so dreadful.”

“Hey,” I said. “It wasn’t that bad.”

“I’ve heard worse,” he allowed, reaching across me to correct the position of my fingers on the keys. “Just yesterday, I think it was.”

Settling his hand over mine, his fingers aligned with my own, eclipsing the silver and ruby-eyed skull ring I still wore.

“I’m going to let that one go,” I said.

“Ah, you’re kinder than your playing,” he said, making me laugh this time. He pressed his pinky down on mine, and the repeated heartbeat note filled the room, beautiful and resonant.

Normally, whenever Dad was home or Charlie was about, I’d cross to his side for practice sessions, or just to talk. Sometimes, though, when Dad was out and Charlie was sleeping, we’d meet in my parlor. Always, we had the piano, our music, and each other.

“This seems like the easy part,” Erik said, “but it’s not. The single repeating notes, they must stay constant through the chord progressions. Or the whole thing falls apart.”

My right hand flowed through the chords while he guided my left through the repetitious single A. When it came time for my left hand to switch, he released me and let me go on.

The moody middle of “Für Elise” stormed on from there, the lighter notes intertwining with the dark ones to become two halves of one whole.

“Beautiful,” Erik remarked when, arriving at the place where our last lesson had ended, I had to halt. “Now again. From the beginning.”

Replacing my hands on the proper keys, my fingers moved with a new and hard-won fluidity as they tiptoed over the somber notes my mom had ushered me through in my younger years. Next, I waded into the lighter ones that Erik’s instruction had helped me to grasp. He let me play on, his right hand interceding at the point when all the high notes came flying out one after the other in the sequence we’d yet to take on together.

Then the dark part arrived again, and this time, he let me take it all on my own.