I almost turned back twice before the cab even reached the building. Grief makes you imagine horrors, and my mind clawed at every worst-case scenario. Yet when I stepped into that quiet, hidden music room, jealousy dissolved into awe. Every journal entry, every clumsy notation, every late-night practice he described was a love letter written in a language he’d never dared to speak aloud. He hadn’t been unfaithful to me; he had been faithful to the version of me that once believed she could fill a concert hall.
Sitting at that piano, I realized the room wasn’t a monument to a secret life. It was a bridge between the girl I had been and the woman I had become. By finishing his last song, I wasn’t just honoring his devotion—I was reclaiming my own abandoned dream. His final Valentine’s gift wasn’t the music itself, but permission to keep playing.
