Chapter 12: Music
Lily began staying after lunch twice a week to use the school keyboard.
Miss Torres sent a short note home saying she had a focused ear and steady attention for her age. I read the note at the kitchen table while Lily ate a snack and felt something ease in my chest that I had not fully named since the night we left.
That weekend I found a basic used keyboard through a local listing—nothing expensive, well below the two hundred dollars she had originally asked for. We picked it up on a Saturday morning. Lily carried the box up the stairs herself and set it on the small desk in her room. She did not play it immediately. She sat on the bed and looked at it for a long time, as if giving the object permission to exist in this new place.
In the evening I heard the first careful notes through the wall.
May you like
I did not interrupt.
When she came out later she simply said, “It works,” and went to brush her teeth. The plainness of the comment mattered more than excitement would have. She was allowed to want the thing. She was allowed to have it. The rest could stay uncomplicated.
