Chapter 4: The Tin

Spalding Pianos is a narrow brick shop on Wickenden Street with eleven pianos in it and one bad window.

My father put his name on the glass in gold leaf thirty-four years ago, and the gold has been flaking ever since.

I went upstairs and tore the wedding dress off over my head.

I put on jeans and my father's old grey cardigan, and I left the dress in a white heap on the bedroom floor.

When I came down, Bram was standing just inside the door.

He was too big for the shop.

He always had been, and he stood with his shoulders turned to keep from knocking over the nearest upright.

Pearl had put the kettle on.

She put a mug in front of each of us.

Then she went to the cabinet behind the front desk and took out a blue Danish butter-cookie tin.

She set it on the counter between us with a small, firm thud.

"Open it," she said.

"Pearl."

"Open the tin, Etta Marie."

I lifted the lid.

Inside, stacked in a neat block, were seven Christmas cards.

Seven envelopes in the same square, careful hand, addressed to Pearl Spalding, Wickenden Street.

The first one was soft with age.

The last one still had a crisp postmark from December.

I looked at the handwriting for a long time.

I knew it better than my own.

"These are his," I said.

"One a year," Pearl said. "He never wrote to you, because you told him not to."

"He wrote to me, to ask if you were all right."

"And you never told me."

"You'd have burned them."

"I would have burned them," I agreed, and I shut the lid.

Bram hadn't moved from the door.

"Etta," he said. "I'm not asking you to read them."

"Good, because I won't."

"Pearl called me three weeks ago."

His voice was lower than I remembered, with a scrape in it.

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