As he had already mentioned it, she - for a moment - fixed her eyes on the piano standing in the room, as she regarded and scrutinized it. It remembered of times long gone, ones that she could barely even remember, as though they were wrapped around a nigh opaque haze. A faint smile played around the corners of her lips. “I remember when I was young, my mother decided it was best for me to start practicing some instrument. And since she had played the piano herself, she decided to buy a keyboard for me and found a teacher for me.” She paused to think, and slowly weighed her head to the left again to look at Doc. “It only took a few months for her to realize that I wasn’t much of a musical genius. And I wasn’t really trying either. So in the end, I jacked it in.” Scratching her head, she looked around the room once more, all whilst fumbling about with the bottle in her hands. It made them quite wettish, and for a second she wasn’t anymore able to tell whether it was just condensate or panic sweat, before realizing there was no reason to panic.
Relieved that this short, sudden notion was nonsense, she gave Doc another brief look. Why again had she just told him this? Was she really already so eased? Or was it just that she didn’t have nearly as much problems speaking about her life with her family than the last year? “What I wanted to say,” she continued, “is that playing the piano has never been a strength of mine. Funny how that memory just came up.” As she lowered her head, she weighed the bottle in her hands and gave it a try. This one’s flavor was the exact same as the last one’s, she realized. Not that she minded; flavor of beer could hardly get old, she imagined.
After she had taken a few gulps, she put the bottle aside and laid her head against the armrest, almost as though she was rolling herself up on the couch, with the blanket covering her. Only now a brief glance through the window told her the snowstorm, although still in a raging mood apparently, was glacially ceasing. The wind wasn’t as volatilely banging against the windows anymore, she observed. It made the whole place more quiet; Elena had no objection against that: storms were a nuisance to her, but especially with her thoughts in turmoil would they become actually harassing.
Facedown, she pulled a strand of hair out of her face and kept staring at her folded hands that she had above the blanket. “Anyways, back to the topic,” said Elena in a quieter voice than before. It sounded a tad sad, but at least not like she would let her emotions erupt from one moment to the other again. “In case you know any protectories of sorts, ones that have to get by with the bare minimum of budget, I’d like to help them out a little. It’s not like I’m a billionaire or anything, but I’m not exactly poor either. I could probably do without some of it.” Halting for a moment, she again lost herself in thoughts. There was probably more she could do. But which of those things were reasonable and, above all, responsible? “I could visit them on a regular basis, doing stuff with them… cheering them up, perhaps. But I wouldn’t want to go further. I think that’s the best way I could help.” Adopting was out of question for her. Whether it was because she was afraid of the responsibility that would come with it, and of possible repeated failure, or because of her notion that she didn’t know in how much trouble she still was due to past events, Elena couldn’t tell. But her stomach gave her a definite “No.” when she thought about adoption.
