The Seventh Time novel · Chapter 21 of 24
Chapter 21: The Piano Arrives
The piano came down Detroit Avenue on a Saturday morning in a flatbed truck, strapped to a skid, under a blue moving blanket.
A half-dozen people from the dock stood around it in the street, holding straps.
The old forklift driver supervised from the cab with a thermos on the dash.
"Left side up!" she shouted. "Not your left, kid. Mine!"
"Which one is that?" said Killian, hanging off the tailgate.
"The one that's about to be crushed!"
It was the 1928 Steinway from the Ashworth music room.
The housekeeper had called on Thursday to say that the movers Broderick had hired were waiting at the house, with a note.
Killian had refused them, politely, and sent his own crew.
I stood on the sidewalk outside the music shop where I worked, with my arms folded against the cold.
My boss stood behind me in the doorway with his reading glasses pushed up on his head.
"A Steinway O," he said, almost reverently. "In a truck. In December."
"Please don't talk to it."
"I'm not talking to it. I'm praying."
They got it down the ramp with ten straps and a great deal of swearing.
They rolled it through the front door past the guitars and the sheet music and the little upright with the cracked leg, and set it against the back wall under the window.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of The Seventh Time are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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