Page 19 of Heart Strings

“Mamá, this is Abigail. Abigail, this is my mamá, Maria.”

“Abigail!” my mother exclaimed, taking Abigail’s hand while I watched with a grin. “Oh wow, you’re so beautiful! Please, come in.” She swept my surprised companion inside. “Shut the door, Alejandro, and come to the kitchen.”

While the two women talked, I moseyed over to the stove and lifted the lids of the various pots. “Lunch looks amazing, Mamá.” It had been far too long since I had my mother’s ropa vieja, a traditional and popular food in Cuban cuisine.

“Alejandro!” my dad exclaimed, coming into the kitchen from the living room. “Good to see you. I was wondering why Maria was making such a spread for lunch.” My father could also speak Spanish fluently, but he had noticed our guest.

I shook his hand and gave him a much briefer hug than the one I had shared with my mother. “I tried to get her to let me take us all out to eat, but you know how she is. And Papá, this is Abigail.”

“Hello, I’m Ethan.” The two shook hands.

With all four of us working together, getting lunch out of the pots and pans and onto the spacious dining room table took no time at all. Over savory mouthfuls of rice and ropa vieja, I caught up with my parents and helped Abigail answer the endless stream of questions from my mother.

It was funny, actually. Everything I learned about Abigail made me like her more, and I realized it was the same for my mother. Abigail attended a university, she worked hard, she had a dream she was working toward, and she was talented. That last one I had to help her with because Abigail was doing a poor job of explaining just how well she could play the piano.

Humble, too. I could add that to the things I liked about this girl. The egos in the rock industry… Let’s just say that Abigail was a breath of fresh air.

“Lunch was amazing, thank you, Mrs. Maria,” Abigail said, hands resting on the edges of her plate. “What should I do with this?”

“You sit in the living room!” Mamá insisted immediately. “I’ll clean.” She took Abigail’s plate before she could argue, collected the rest of the plates around the table, and disappeared into the kitchen.

“Shouldn’t we help?” Abigail whispered to me after my dad collected the rest of the condiments, uneaten food and spices on the table to take them to the kitchen.

“No. Mamá likes it when you offer to help, but she’ll always say she doesn’t need it. That wouldn’t be hospitable in her eyes.” The wooden chair creaked as I pushed it back under the table. “I want to show you something.”

“Your parents are nice.” Abigail followed me into the living room.

“They are. They work hard, and they like people who work hard too.” I led Abigail behind the homely couch. “This was the first keyboard I ever owned.”

She stepped up to the instrument on its stand and pressed one finger to a key, wiping away a layer of dust. “You haven’t played it in a long time. Does it still work?”

I hadn’t shown it to her to reminisce about old times. “Let’s find out.” Any excuse to listen to Abigail play would work for me.

Once plugged in, the keyboard did indeed work - after I jiggled the plug where it went into the piano a few times and pressed the power button repeatedly. “I guess it does still work.” The blue power light went out and I had to poke the cord again. “Mostly.” This time the light stayed on, and I dragged the stool in the corner over to the stand. “Hm. I remember it sounding better than this.” The scale I played on the keyboard sounded a bit flat and tinny.

“Well, it is old. And it was your first keyboard.” Abigail listened, nodding her head to the music while I played a short piece.

“Your turn.” I took her hand and gallantly helped her into the seat. Her hand slipped gracefully from mine and laid each finger on the keys.

It was my turn to sway back and forth to the music. Even on this dinosaur-age keyboard, Abigail played so beautifully that all other sound melted away in the background. Well, until-

“Alejandro!” my mamá called. “Ayudame, por favor?”

“Be right back. Gotta help my mother with something,” I told Abigail, pushing myself away from the back of the couch I had been leaning against and jogging to the kitchen. “Sí, Mamá?”

As it turned out, my dad had gone outside to the vegetable garden to do something for her, and she needed her tall, muscular son to reach up and grab something from the back of a high shelf. I reached the dish she wanted and handed it to her. Her exclamations about her big, strong hijo put a smile on my face that lasted up until I walked back into the living room and stood behind Abigail…and caught an earful of the song she was playing.

It was the song, the same song. The one she had been humming earlier in the car. Her left hand had shifted to the lowest notes on the keyboard to play it, and the right hand on the higher notes hardly joined in at all. It looked like a song someone just learning might play, definitely far too easy and unsuited for someone as talented as Abigail.

“That’s the song from your sheet music, right?” Maybe it wasn’t that song. Even if it was, why should I feel so unsettled? It was just a song.

She stopped playing. “Yeah. I just wanted to see what it would sound like.”

“Have you not played it before?” Again, just like earlier, something didn’t add up here, and something about her voice wouldn’t allow me to let this go.

“Not in a long time. Your turn!” She stood up, took both my hands and tugged me to the seat.

I raised my hands, wondering what I should play. It needed to be something cheerful, fast-paced, and with plenty of high notes - something that would get that song out of my head.

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