It was a few weeks later when she told me she had found something.

We were sitting together, close in that easy way we had returned to, when she mentioned an ad—something small, buried in an obscure musicology newsletter. A name. A place in New York. She spoke about it as if it mattered, but I didn’t immediately understand why.

I must have looked confused.

She studied me for a moment, then smiled slightly, almost gently.

“You don’t remember?” she said.

And just like that, I did.

It was early—our third or fourth time together. I had come to pick her up, still new to the rhythm of her world, still discovering it piece by piece. Her mother opened the door and, without much explanation, motioned for me to come in and sit by the piano.

Regina was already playing.

At first, I felt puzzled—just the week before she had started piano lessons.

I remember sitting down quietly, not wanting to interrupt, not even sure I should be there. And then the music reached me.

Bartók.

Not tentative. Not someone learning. It came through her completely formed, as if it had always been there. Her posture was different that night—more upright, more certain. There was a presence in the room that felt older than either of us.

When she finished, she looked at me—not proudly, not asking for approval—just present.

Then, after a small pause, she added, almost matter-of-factly:

“Sometimes this happens. It’s like muscle memory… even though he’s gone, I sometimes let him play.”

I didn’t know what to say.

I accepted it the way I had already begun to accept so many things about her—not by understanding, but by allowing them to be part of who she was.

When she mentioned the ad again, sitting beside me now, it settled into place.

“There’s a name,” she said. “An address.”

She looked at me directly.

“I think I know who it is.”

Then, without hesitation:

“Will you take me to New York?”

We drove down in my MGB, neither of us saying too much. The distance felt larger than it was—New York still something unknown to us, something we entered more by instinct than plan.

When we arrived in Brooklyn, she gave me the address and then turned to me.

“You need to stay in the car.”

It wasn’t a suggestion.

There was a tone in her voice I had learned not to question—not forceful, but certain. As if there were steps that had to be followed exactly.

I didn’t like it. Not knowing what she might find, not knowing what waited inside that building. But I nodded.

She stepped out and walked toward a worn brownstone, disappearing inside without looking back.

I sat there.

At first, I watched the door. Then the street. Then the light as it began to change. Time stretched in a way that felt both long and suspended. I remember thinking I would go in if it got dark. That I wouldn’t just sit there forever.

But I didn’t move.

Something about it felt… already decided.

When she came back, she looked pale.

She got into the car and closed the door, and for a while she said nothing. We pulled away from the curb, back into the slow movement of the city, then onto the highway heading north.

It wasn’t until we were well out of the city that she spoke.

“Mizwa is dead.”

She said it quietly, as if saying it too loudly might disturb something.

I felt it before I understood it. A kind of stillness.

“He died on September 21,” she said.

I knew that date.

It was the day of the ceremony.

The day they said everything had been… resolved.

I didn’t try to explain it.

I didn’t try to fit it into anything I already knew.

I heard him play.

That was enough.

And whatever else might be true—that remained true too.