"But he—"
"I know. Go on. I'll take care of it."
I went up, but only as far as the landing, where the stairs turned and the shadow was deep, and I sat down with my knees pulled up into my nightgown.
For a long time my mother didn't move. Oliver sat on the bench and she stood by the stairs and the furnace came on and went off. Then she walked across the room and sat down on the very end of the bench, away from the cat, with her hands in her lap. I could see the side of her face in the streetlight. Her mouth was pressed tight.
She lifted the fallboard. It folded back into the case with a soft wooden knock.
Oliver stepped up onto the keys at the high end, the way he had before, carefully, so they didn't sound. He settled. He reached out his white paw and pressed the black key to the left of the middle, and the note came out and filled the room, round and soft and endless.
My mother flinched as though someone had touched a cold hand to the back of her neck.
Then Oliver jumped down, and walked past her, and went up the stairs past me on the landing without a glance, and I heard him go into my parents' room, where my father was snoring.
My mother sat on the bench for a long time. When she finally got up, she did not close the fallboard. She left it open, the keys like a row of teeth in the dark, and she went upstairs, and I had to scramble to get back into my room before she saw me.
* * *
By the end of the first week everyone knew about it, and everyone had a theory.
Sam's theory was that it was Grandma June's ghost. He announced this at dinner on Friday over Shake 'n Bake chicken, and my father nearly choked on his milk.