Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 853 & 854, September/October 2012

I fold up the letter and put it away. Now grief should arrive — I have nobody in the world left to care for me — but it will not come, even though I repeat out loud: She’s gone, Dearbhla’s gone. Yes, I am still full of what passes for normal thought here: Is cabbage on for dinner again tonight? Should I go out for exercise tomorrow? It does not hit me, this new reality.

All the pieces Dearbhla played for me were beautifuclass="underline" nocturnes, mazurkas, the Moonlight Sonata, a waltz called “Adieu” which Chopin wrote when he was dying of tuberculosis. But force myself as I may, I cannot recall any of them. Another piece intercedes, yes, that broken piece again, the Gymnopédie, replete with mistakes and laughter and sunset on the pedals. Dearbhla is overshadowed, just as she feared. She should never have played that piece, not even once.

Haven’t we both betrayed her for love? My mother plays on, her eyes shut and a little smile on her face. Nothing complex, nothing overwhelming. No cross-signatures or bombast. Just her playing, done for love. All of it done for love.

People like my father have it easy. They get rid of people the way balloons lose ballast, slowly chucking each one out until they can float free. They are never without somebody to want and need them — but are never truly happy until solitary and rid of all encumbrances. We had all given him so much, even I who killed him. I freed him from life’s inconveniences, from people’s needs. He would never have been content had he lived.

And Dearbhla is dead. But grief still isn’t breaking through, why should it, when she is nothing to me by blood? That tranquil Gymnopédie bars me from feeling. The best I can do is try to understand how she felt. Dearbhla’s pain is my mother’s pain, is my own. The pain of knowing that you have loved one person all your life and he does not give this love back, in full or at all. No — he frowns, forbids, withholds. He is always the person who has the last word; no logic can contradict him. The dancing feet are stilled; the piano wrapped up and sent to storage. My childhood is over. Mama gone.

The walls of my cell brighten: another sunset. Oh, I remember it all now. I have all the time in the world to do nothing else but remember.