The Piano Sonata of Divorce​

1

The day I found out my mother was having an affair with my piano teacher, my father was eerily calm. All he said was that he wanted to hear me play one last piece.

But as the final note faded into silence, he leaped from the roof of our three-story home.

I watched him fall. I saw his body shatter against the flagstones, his blood staining the white roses in the garden a sickening crimson.

From that moment on, the piano became my deepest, darkest nightmare.

That’s why, on my wedding day, I told my wife, Aurora, "If you ever want to divorce me, just play a song on the piano."

Back then, she was just an unknown cover artist. She wrapped her arms around me, her embrace tight and fierce. "Don't worry," she whispered. "There will never be a piano in our house."

Five years later, Aurora was a sensation—a chart-topping singer-songwriter. When a top-tier luxury brand offered her a massive endorsement deal that required her to play piano in their commercial, she refused without a moment's hesitation.

Watching the press conference, seeing the unwavering resolve in her eyes, I thought to myself, this is what true love looks like.

A year after that, I came home early, clutching the sheet music for a new song I’d just finished for her. But as I walked up the driveway, I heard it. A melody, flowing from the open windows of our mansion.

The sound of a piano.

I found Aurora seated at a grand piano I had never seen before. A young man in a crisp white suit stood behind her, his arms wrapped around her as their fingers danced and intertwined across the black and white keys.

When she saw me, Aurora’s expression didn't change. She just gestured casually. "Ethan, this is Leo. He’s your half-brother. He came to connect with family."

I stared at her, and a slow, cold smile spread across my face.

"My father only had one son."

In that instant, I knew.

Our marriage was over.

2

I sat before my father’s grave for three hours, the silence broken only by the wind whispering through the cypress trees. The sky was a heavy, oppressive grey, a cruel echo of the day he left me.

In my head, a phantom concerto played on a loop.

The piano. It used to be my world.

Ten years ago today, my mother ran off with my piano teacher. And my father, my quiet, gentle father, ended his life to the soundtrack of my playing. After that, the piano became a ghost that haunted my every waking moment. A nightmare I could never escape.

I’ve always believed I was the one who killed him. If I had never learned to play, if I hadn't touched the keys that day... maybe he would still be here.

And now, ten years later, my own wife had invited the son of that monster into my home, sat him down at a piano, and let him tear open my oldest, deepest wound.

The most bitter irony? The piece they were playing was a melody I recognized—a variation of the breakout hit I wrote for Aurora, the song that launched her into stardom. The ladder I had painstakingly built for her, plank by painful plank, had just become the b...