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I do not ask why.

She looks at my hand where it rests on the counter.

“How many bones are in your hand?”

“Twenty-seven.”

She bends over the plan again.

I let her keep it.

After dinner I open the piano.

Tova brings her homework to the rug and sits cross-legged with one sock half off.

“The fast one.”

“My hands have not done this since spring.”

“That’s why you should practice.”

“I had forgotten how encouraging you are.”

The first run is ugly. My left hand arrives late. I stop, reset, and take it slower. The notes live deeper in my fingers than I expect, and by the third attempt the shape comes back.

Tova taps her pencil against her knee in time for four measures before she notices and stops.

I keep going.

I reach the difficult run and get through it.

Then I do it again, because I want to hear myself get it right.

Tova closes her book.

“Can we go to Sweden?”

I let the last notes settle before I turn.

“For a visit?”

“To live.”

My hands stay on the keys. The chord has gone and I can still feel it in the wood.

The answer she is asking for is not a feeling. It is six years of paperwork, a license I fought for in a language I had to think in, and a status that does not survive me leaving. Going back is not a door. It is a demolition.

She is twelve. She gets the version with feelings in it.

“Because Mormor is there?”

“That too.”

“What else?”

She pulls the loose sock back over her heel.

“I want people to get what I mean before I’m done saying it.”