The receipt said delivered and carried her father's signature. The piano had left the house after her mother's death, although he insisted he never sold it. When Cora found the paper, she thought grief had altered his memory.
The recipient was the community room in Bellwether Close. Its old committee minutes recorded a long-term loan, with transport paid by the room and ownership retained by her father. He signed to confirm delivery, not to transfer title. The receipt lacked the distinction because it was a transport document.
Cora found a second letter asking that children be allowed to practice on the instrument. Her father had preferred hearing that it was used elsewhere to keeping it silent at home. He died without updating the arrangement, leaving the piano between private property and public habit.
She formalized the donation after speaking with the committee. The new document named the gift and the people remembered by it. At the first lesson afterward, a child played the same uneven scale Cora once practiced. The piano's journey had not begun with the sale she imagined, but it could now end with a decision clearly recorded.