Chapter Text
A few months had passed since Solange’s wedding with her one and only lover. I parted with Marie on the way as she deserved more than me, as she carried Blandine with her. And being the irresponsible father with so many concerts to attend to, I believed that to be the best choice despite my selfish attachments to them.
Aurore, stopped dogging Solange with disapproval after her daughter finally married and bore him two lovely children.
“I’m proud you have such a family now,” said Aurore the day after Frédéric’s funeral - an event she did not attend - to a Solange who half-listened and half-tended to a child, coughing and whining. “Love is hard for everyone to attain and requite.”
Solange hurried to take her children to their cribs, leaving me to muse upon a piano’s stool, with an unopened envelope in my hand.
“I certainly know such a notion now,” Aurore rose up, “Frédéric had taught enough to last me for days.”; leaving a lock of his hair upon the piano and going out the front door.
She had no manuscripts of the great composer’s music in her hands, and she lived her life with a kinder lover and wiser, motherly heart.
I headed out from home, taking a brisk walk to the more peaceful parks of Paris. Solange walked by me on the way.
We went together to the secluded corners of Paris, overgrown with tearful fronds of fern and yearnful bushes of honeysuckle.
As we stopped by a gravel path, beside a polished sculpture that would be visited by so many people for years to come.
“You’re okay, are you?”
I smiled at her; falling into a bittersweet reverie. From the top of her head to the voice at the back of throat, her kindness and empathy remained the same innocence, but refined and wiser.
She had grown stouter, just as more wrinkles folded from my skin, as the concerts in my life decreased, and with more manuscript papers bought.
How much we had grown in our own little stories, with our children, inside our hearts and bodies; all because of love.
My falling tear fell upon Frédéric’s tombstone, above the earth in which he finally had his peaceful slumber.
As the sunlight warmed our souls, with Frédéric below us, I could not believe a ghost so peaceful would roam this lonesome earth with the same sorrowful heart or heavy burdens as I last saw him; his shoulders rested light and airy, having gushed the last of his melodies as quick as he exhaled his breaths.
Though grief gathered like mildew under the shadows of the sun, I rejoiced - with joy and contentment just as plentiful as the blossoms under the sunlight - that Frédéric slept free from his anguish and rested well at last.
I squeezed Solange’s hand - stronger and warmer than how Frédéric had once described it to be; and my other, grasping a yellowing letter in my pocket, had my thumb particularly smudged with the ink.
The ink, spilled by a quill, that spelt the words -
“Best wishes,
Frédéric Chopin.”