“I recently had the opportunity to meet a remarkable young man who could very well revolutionize the classical music world,” Shawna started. “He’s the highlight of Lincoln Center’s summer programming and—get this—he’s only seventeen.”

The anchors glanced at each other with a chorus of murmurs, and I let out a squeal, gripping the edge of the sofa to keep from floating off the ground.

The story began with shots of Lincoln Center, then Dad—hi Dad!—strolling to the Amberley side, waving to passersby, while Shawna talked about how white and Asian the classical music world had remained in the past century. A crash of music and . . .

Oscar! In rehearsal! Not his music, a Chevalier de Saint-Georges concerto, which was so perfect and . . .

I slumped into a crouch beside the sofa. Even at the podium, he was wearing that interview outfit—the hoodie and jeans and basketball shoes. He wasn’t conducting with the same gusto as I was used to seeing. But he was magnificent.

Then the interview.

Shawna, smiling indulgently, with more than a glint of let’s be real in her eyes: “How did a kid like you get into classical music?”

My smile fell away as I watched Oscar fighting to hold on to his.

“I always loved it,” he said. “From birth, pretty much . . .”

Then his voice was drowned out by a well-known rap track, face replaced by a POV shot of a car driving through an urban downtown area, Shawna talking about how he’d grown up in DC and his mother had saved up to send him to an elite private school for a chance at—there it was again—a better life.

His father wasn’t mentioned. Etta at Duke, Bri, who wrote fan-fic. Anyone watching would think he was raised by a low-income single mother in the middle of the projects. It made for a wonderful story.

“This isn’t . . . true,” I sputtered. “None of this is true.”

“What’s not true, honey?” Grandma asked.

I bit my thumbnail, waiting for another shot of Oscar. It came in the form of that YouTube video, with a graphic of the views counter going up and up, framed by a blurry Beyoncé video and a baby trying to juggle Cheerios.

Then back to Oscar, thank God. He was smiling for real now.

“This music,” he said, leaning on his knees. “It’s at the heart of humanity. It burns, it tells the truth. I wish more people had the opportunity to hear it the way I do.”

“And the venerated Amberley School of Music is helping to make that wish come true,” went Shawna’s voiceover, cutting to a shot of Nora and Bill sitting with Oscar in Nora’s pastel office.