I spent the next week finishing the repairs and searching for Ingrid. The estate sale organizer remembered that Harold Vance had once been engaged to a pianist named Ingrid Holm, but she had moved away suddenly in 1975. No one knew why. I phoned retirement homes and music schools across the state, until finally a kind receptionist in St. Paul said, “We have a resident named Ingrid Holm. But she has dementia, and she rarely speaks.”

I drove there that Saturday with the freshly restored piano score in a folder. A nurse led me down a quiet corridor to a sunny room where a small, silver-haired woman sat by the window, staring at nothing. On the wall behind her was a faded photograph of the same young pianist. My hands trembled. I asked the nurse whether there was a piano in the building. She smiled and pointed down the hall.