She slid the wooden roll top up, which made another loud clatter. Mr. Richardson had taken over when—three, four years ago? He hadn’t bothered to clean up, and the space was just as her mother had left it. Muriel loved candy, and her tin of Hoffman’s cherry drops was still on the bookcase, along with a glass jar filled with circus peanuts. The top of the console was cluttered like a bedside table, with a pile of St. Gregory Hymnals and a yellowed German prayer card that had been handed out at Otto Heinrich’s funeral a decade ago. It featured a kneeling St. Thomas praying to an angel. Sherri’s mother and Otto used to play duets together, her mother on the piano, Otto on the violin. They exchanged books, they met for coffee, and, before her legs gave out, they went on long walks. Sherri’s parents’ marriage felt more like a business arrangement, as if they’d agreed to keep each other just a little less lonely. Her mother and Otto seemed more married than her parents ever had. Her mother had been despondent after Otto died. “He had the most wonderful vibrato,” she’d said. “Such expression. He could live inside the music.”

Sherri slipped off her sandals and sat down on the bench. She hadn’t played in almost half a year, and for a moment she worried she might have forgotten how. She had an excellent ear, and she could memorize and play just about anything she heard, but no matter how hard she tried she wasn’t any good at reading music, and she couldn’t improvise like a jazz musician. Her playing was too passionate, and she lacked the patience to develop technique. She always knew that she’d never, ever play organ in the fine cathedrals in Europe that her mother had told her about—she’d probably never even go to Europe.

She began with some finger and foot scales, working her way to “Gentle Shepherd” and a few bars of Pachelbel’s Canon, a song that moved her mother to tears, partly because of the music itself, and partly because that was the song that had been played at John F. Kennedy’s funeral, and her mother had loved Kennedy so much that she hung commemorative plates with his image on her bedroom wall, although now Sherri would always think of Sam and that hotel in Houston when she thought of the late, beloved president.

Sherri played the canon because it was a way of connecting with her mother, although she found the song slow and laborious. She preferred romantic music that was big, fast, and exciting. Her mother and Mrs. Vogel were always saying, Slow down, Sherri, slow down.