“Not like that.” He waved it off, picking up a pile of mail from the kitchen counter. “It was work for me. I had to sit down and figure it out—still do. Music bubbles out of that kid. This summer, we’re gonna figure out how to channel it, get it down, get it heard.”

“I saw him on YouTube,” I admitted. “Nora played it for me.”

“She does like that video,” he said, sifting through the mail. I made a mental note to go through the stack again once he’d finished. He had a habit of mistaking bills for junk mail and fan letters for personal correspondence.

“For you, my dear.”

He tossed a postcard onto the table. I slid it closer, taking in the familiar photo of a lantern-lit forest full of young musicians before turning the card over. No phones or email allowed at Wildwood, but my friends had promised to write.

“How’s our Farrah?” Dad sat. “Enjoying camp?”

“I assume so,” I mumbled, deciphering her messy writing.

. . . Wally and Max miss you desperately, their words verbatim . . . finally a new kid this year, a violinist from Texas, but alas he’s super awkward, not as hot as you might hope . . .

“You sure you don’t want to head up?” Dad put his hands behind his neck, voice carefully bored. “They won’t mind you skipping a week. It’s no Amberley, but it’s a solid program.”

I picked at a scuff in the wood. “Bit too solid for the likes of me.”

“Why would you say that?” He leaned forward. “This is the first year you’ve missed since you were—what? Twelve?”

“Dad.” I stared at him. “Come on.”

He let out a long sigh—as close to a confession as I was going to get. “It’s not as simple as you’re making it out to be, Ruby. What selection committees are looking for is potential, and legacy’s a damn strong indicator of—”

“I’m seventeen.” Lang Lang had been performing professionally since fourteen. Even Mom, a famous late bloomer, made her competition debut when she was younger than me. “Wouldn’t my potential have shown up by now?”

He didn’t have an answer. I didn’t expect him to. It was time to move on.

I got dressed while Dad was in his study, grabbed a notebook and a pen, shoved them in a canvas bag, and headed for the door.

“Popping out?” Dad shouted from the stairwell. “Wake up Oscar, would you? Tell him to come on in when he’s ready.”

I froze. “Um.”

“Thanks, doll.”

I tiptoed to the doorstep of the basement studio apartment, wary of vermin, but it looked like somebody had swept.