In December, Mom had Grandma's piano tuned for the first time in years.

The tuner was an old man with white hair, who spent three hours on it and said it was “one of the good ones.”

I practiced every night. Mom sat on the stairs and listened, the way Grandma used to.

The school winter recital was the week before Christmas. I played Clair de Lune. It was the hardest thing I'd ever learned.

Mom and Ethan sat in the third row.

Dad came too. He sat alone at the back of the hall.

Afterwards, while everybody was eating cookies, Mom walked to the back of the hall and said something to him. He looked surprised. Then he followed her and sat down in our row, next to Ethan.

“What did you say to him?” I asked her later.

“That you'd want your whole family in the same row,” she said. “Was I wrong?”

I thought about it.

“No,” I said. “You weren't wrong.”

Dad told me my playing was beautiful. He said Grandma would have cried.

I think he was right.