Like a witness, it sat in the corner. Not quite an object, not quite alive but in between, like a letter never sent but read too often, or a diary lock rusted shut. Walnut face and ivory teeth. It had been played not casually, not cruelly, but with an attention that verges on worship. The fingers came and went. The hands changed. Men, women, children. Grief wore them down. So did ambition. So did boredom. The piano remembered all. The rhythms, hungers. The heavy chords of love gone wrong. The waltzes of girls with missing mothers. The scales of boys terrified to fail. It didn’t judge. Judging is for the living but it did notice.