Carrie,
I am not good at saying things. You know that. Your father was the talker. I was the one at the piano.
I have played the first note every night since he died. I know you could not answer and I never blamed you. Not one night. I just did not want you to ever come home and find the house quiet. I wanted somebody here to still be saying it.
The rest of the song is yours. It always was. I only kept the first note warm.
If you ever want to answer, I will be listening. Wherever I am.
Mama
I read it twice. Then I put it back in the envelope with the music, exactly the way it had been, and tucked the flap in, and sat on the floor of the living room with Oliver's chin on my knee and cried so hard that he got up and moved to the bench, offended, and sat with his back to me until I was finished.
Then I called Mrs. Kostelnik back, collect, and told her I'd found it. She said "Oh, thank God," and then, "Oh, June," and then she didn't say anything for a while, and neither did I, and somewhere in her house Bing Crosby was still singing about a white Christmas, and it occurred to me that it was costing her money, and I said goodbye.
* * *
I put the front panel back on the piano before anyone came home. It took me three tries to get the latches lined up, and I scraped a pale line in the finish on the left side doing it, which I covered with a Kleenex and a lie I never had to tell. The envelope I put in my bookbag, between my social studies textbook and my green notebook, and zipped it shut.
I didn't give it to her that day. Or the next.