ONE RAINY SUNDAY, Cora brought her grandfather's gramophone down from the attic. Penny had found some old records in the parlor, mostly dance tunes and love songs. But the record Cora chose was Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.
"Listen to it with your eyes closed," Cora said as she wound up the gramophone. "The music is meant to paint the picture of the full moon reflecting on a lake." Then she lowered the needle to the record. Irene Hamilton used to play Beethoven during her piano lessons, yet Penny had never heard anything like this. It sounded just like yearning. As the notes wove around her, the lake became a real thing, its dark rippling surface reflecting the radiance of the moon it adored. But at the same time, the calm mirroring water held secrets, fiercely protecting the sunken treasure hidden in its depths. Penny turned her face away from Cora as her eyes began to burn and a single tear moved over her cheek. Then Cora said something, her voice almost a part of the music.
"'The midnight moon is weaving her bright chain o'er the deep.'"
When Penny glanced in her direction, she saw that Cora had read those words out of a book. She had never seen her so peaceful, the way she leaned back in her chair, all the tight worry lines in her face smoothed away. This lull couldn't last long—Penny expected Phoebe to start crying any minute and shatter the spell. And yet the baby slept on and the music continued, each phrase of notes making her breathe deeper, the waters inside her unfurling in gentle waves that touched the shore.
"That was from a poem by Lord Byron," Cora said after a long pause.
"How do you know so much?" Penny asked her. "About music and poetry?"
"My father. He loved these things. When he was young, he wanted to be a pianist more than anything else, but his father wouldn't hear of it. He made him quit his lessons. Piano playing wasn't considered manly enough. My father was supposed to manage his family's slaughter yards."
"But then he met your mother."
"She fell in love with him when he first played for her. We kept a cottage piano in the house where I grew up. He played after supper. His face always changed with the music."
Penny imagined her as a little girl listening to her father. "Can you play?"
"I never had the patience for lessons. It was his gift, not mine. But my brother took after him."
"Didn't you get another letter from him?" Penny remembered the envelope with the foreign stamps that had come the previous week.
Cora smiled. "Yes. He says he's finally managed a sabbatical, so he can visit me. It sure will be nice to see him again." Her voice brimmed with hope.
"Your brother sounds nice," Penny said. "Your father, too. I always wanted a father." She spoke the last sentence so softly, she didn't expect Cora to hear.
"I know," Cora said. "Someone to be proud of you." She got up from her chair and sat beside Penny on the sofa, then touched the end of her braid, which had come undone. Without saying anything, Cora smoothed out the locks and began to braid it again. Penny turned around to make it easier for her. Closing her eyes, she surrendered to the gentle pressure, the tugging on her scalp. Her back was turned to Cora and yet she wanted to face her, wanted to pour into words the things that were hidden inside her. That she loved Cora and Phoebe more than anything, that she would stick by them forever, no matter what happened. But the words wouldn't come. Cora tied the ribbon at the end of her braid and the music washed over them both, music that was far more eloquent than her words could ever be. So when the sonata came to an end, she merely begged Cora to play it again.