I left them, because they were only objects, only money, only things that had never held anything of me.

But my grandmother’s piano I would have carried out on my own back if I had to.

It was not worth, on any market, a fraction of what Patricia’s sofas would fetch.

It was scratched, and slightly out of tune in the upper register no matter how often it was serviced, and it took up a great deal of room, which Patricia had never let me forget.

And it was the most valuable thing in that house, because my grandmother had taught me to play on it, her hands over mine on the keys, in an afternoon light I can still summon whenever I sit down to it.