She needed to play. She needed to touch the cool surface of the smooth ivory. The keys beneath her fingers would soothe her aching heart.
Sarah was dead. Despite everything she had tried to do to help her through this; Sarah was dead. The child was dead too.
Her feet hurried along the hallway to the music room. Her heart pounded. Her throat burned. She forced air into her lungs with every shallow breath. The music room was safe. It had become her place of solace in times of need. Now she needed it; she needed to release the pressure that threatened to explode within her.
Her hands fumbled with the doorknob and she fell into the room. She scurried across the open space to the piano forte. She had been the only person to play this instrument. It felt like it belonged to her. It didn’t. Nothing in this house was hers, and the reason she was here was dead. There was no reason for her to stay. This would be the last time she sat here.
She lifted the lid to reveal the pristine and rigid formation of the black and white keys. While everything was in chaos around her, here was order. She sat down and lay the tips of her fingers against the ivory.
The pain in her heart bled across her chest. Everyone she loved left her. Sarah should not have died. She was too young. She was too innocent. She was too kind and good to have died before she was twenty years old.
Her fingers depressed the keys as she began to play the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata; they glided across the keys in the same unhurried manner as the tears that trickled down her cheeks. The melancholy cadence of the notes flowed from within her.
Her soul cried out at the unfairness of it all. Sarah had died doing the only thing she had ever wanted: to bring a child into the world. She wondered if Sarah had been told that her child had not survived before she succumbed to blood loss. That crone that dared to call herself a midwife probably mopped up the blood on her filthy skirt before demanding payment for her services.
If only she had been there. What could she have done? She was not a medical professional. Her first aid skills were already two years out of date. She would have had no way to stem the blood flow, or replace the blood that Sarah lost. Sarah and her baby, like so many at this time, would have died regardless.
Her fingers continued to move across the keys. Nothing would ease the guilt she felt for leaving when Sarah needed her. But then, she had not left because she wished it. She had been ordered to leave because she had taken a stand against the barbaric practices that passed for midwifery at this time.
Warm tears dropped from the edge of her chin and onto her hands as they glided across the keyboard. She swayed, to and fro, back and forth, at one with the music.
She had endured so much death: her parents, her husband, and now, her friend.
Sarah was more than a friend; she was a sister. She loved Sarah for all her innocent enthusiasm for life. She had allowed herself to get too comfortable, to think that she could become part of this family. It was over.
Her hands froze as the movement came to an end. It was time to leave.
