Elara's fingers trembled as they found the familiar starting position on the keys. She didn't look back at the open window, but she could feel the weight of Lily's gaze—curious, unjudging, and entirely expectant.
She pressed down on the first chord of Leo's unfinished melody. The newly tuned piano responded with a warm, rich resonance that swelled through the dusty room and drifted out into the crisp afternoon air.
She moved to the next chord, and then the next. The four bars of music were painfully short, a beautiful sentence abruptly cut off before its end. When she struck the final note, letting the pedal sustain the sound until it slowly faded into the quiet, she kept her hands frozen on the keys, her heart hammering against her ribs.
"More," a small voice demanded from the window.
Elara turned. Lily was leaning halfway through the frame, her chin resting on her folded arms, the oversized red raincoat bunching around her shoulders.
Elara shook her head, offering a sad, apologetic smile. She tapped the piece of yellowed manuscript paper on the music desk, then held her hands up in a helpless gesture. That was all there was.
Lily frowned, her little brow furrowing in deep concentration. "But it didn't finish. It sounded like it was asking a question, but then it just stopped."
Tears pricked the corners of Elara's eyes. *Exactly.* Leo had been taken before he could finish the question, let alone provide the answer.
"Can't you make up the rest?" Lily asked, tilting her head. "Like making up the end of a bedtime story when Mom falls asleep reading it?"
Elara stared at the keys. Make up the rest? She was a lyricist, a singer. She wasn't a composer. That had always been Leo's domain. He built the house, she just painted the walls.
But as she looked at the blank space on the manuscript paper below his chaotic scribbles, a terrifying, tiny spark ignited in her chest.
She placed her hands back on the keys. She didn't know what she was doing. She didn't know the theory behind Leo's complex jazz progressions. But she knew how his music felt. She knew the shape of his soul because it had been so deeply tangled with hers.
Hesitantly, she pressed a single key. An F-sharp. It clashed terribly with the lingering echo of the last chord. She winced and moved her finger up to a G. It sounded better, a natural, tentative step forward from where Leo had left off.
"Yeah, that one!" Lily cheered from the window, her green eyes lighting up.
Elara took a shaky breath. Guided only by instinct and the phantom memory of Leo's warmth beside her, she formed a simple chord and pressed down. It wasn't perfect. It was clumsy and rudimentary compared to his masterful work.
But it moved the melody forward by an inch.
For the first time in six months, Elara wasn't just echoing the broken past. She was trying to write a future.