"I might not be okay for a while."
"I'm not going anywhere, Alex. However long it takes."
I don't know how long we lay there. Long enough for the sweat and tears to dry on my skin.
Something finally pulled at me from another room.
"The piano," I said. "I need to play."
Ben didn't question me. He untangled himself from the quilt and offered me a corner, wrapping the worn fabric around my shoulders. He took the other half for himself.
The Steinway waited in the parlor, its black lacquer catching the soft moonlight streaming through the windows. My grandmother's wingback chair stood empty beside it. On the music stand, still open,Anything Goes. Her favorite. And on the mantel, the music box Ben had restored—my mother's music box, the tiny dancer inside still and waiting.
I sat at the bench. Ben settled beside me.
I played the first chord of "All Through the Night."
My technique was rusty. The third finger on my left hand stumbled, and my right hand overcompensated, striking the melody too hard. Still, I kept going because stopping would be like giving up.
The second verse came easier. My voice joined the piano—rough, unpracticed, nothing like the polished instrument I'd spent fifteen years honing.
When the last chord faded, my hands stayed on the keys.
"My mother's music box," I said. "The one on the mantel now. Every Christmas morning, she'd wind it up. After she died, Dad sold it, but then you restored it. When it was gone, I thought the magic was gone."
"And now?"
I thought about the tree blazing during the finale, the reindeer pressing their noses to our hearts, and the marks I'd carved without knowing how.
"I think it changes shape," I said. "The magic doesn't disappear—it finds new containers. New music boxes. New songs." I reached for his hand. "New people to carry it forward."
Ben lifted my hand and kissed the knuckles.
The kitchen was cold when we drifted there, pulled by thirst and a sort of gravity. I drank half a glass of water in one swallow.
"There's something I need to give you. I meant to bring it to the theater today, but I forgot. It's been sitting in that cabinet since this morning."
I crossed to the cabinet and pulled out a recipe box—wooden, hand-painted with faded roses, its brass clasp tarnished from decades of floury fingers. I set it between us.
"Open it."
Ben lifted the lid with the same care he'd show the antique music box. The index cards were still there—"Aunt Mabel's Apple Brown Betty" and the legendary lasagna recipe. Tucked in front of them, folded once, was a piece of paper.
Ben unfolded it.
My handwriting looked clumsy next to Grandma's. Five words on a scrap torn from a grocery list pad. Some declarations don't need more than that.
I'm staying. Build something with me.
Ben's breath caught. He traced the edge of the paper with his thumb.
"Al-lex." My name came out splintered.
"I know it's not a ring, and this isn't a proposal exactly, but I needed you to know—officially, in writing—that I'm not going back. That I chose this. That I chose—"
He kissed me before I could finish.
The recipe box rattled as he pulled me against him. I tasted coffee from the thermos he'd drunk on the drive over, and salt from tears neither of us had finished crying.
