Mother always said, “When the man comes, he will be wearing a suit. He will walk up a path covered in rusty pine needles.” I dreamed of him this way–a rumpled stranger outside my house, who stops, and waves.

The hard backed chairs push against my spine while his hand pushes closer to my thigh. He pretends to read the program but really he is looking at me sideways. “Do you remember when we first met?” he whispers as the conductor enters and the house falls to silence. I do remember. I remember him on my dusty drive, looking up at my window, the wind twisting the trees as he stood there on the orange ground, smiling.

Two days in, I let him touch me. He took my hand in his. My fingers long and bony, his short and fat. He thought my hand elegant. “You could have been a pianist,” he said, running his fingers up and down mine.

Sometimes, we would listen to the wind and, if it seemed particularly harsh, put on Mozart’s Requiem and let them duel it out. Mozart won every time. He had to.

Before him I never knew music and his suit was not made of cloth, it was made of wind.