I laughed, wiping my streaming eyes with my free arm.

“See, look at that,” he said, sniffing his tears back. “It shouldn’t take surgery for me to say these things. I should have said them all along. I should have let you run free and explore the wide world instead of slotting you into our little corner of it. Assuming that if it was right for us, it’d be right for you. It was lazy and it was wrong. And while we’re at it, I’ve gotta tell you something else—I was wrong about Oscar.”

He let go of my hand with a pat, retreating.

“He’s better with you around, work-wise. Less wound up, more focused. When you’re not here, the music becomes everything. And everything? It’s too much.” Dad sighed. “Hard to believe, but I was like him once . . . not this washed-up wreck.”

He grinned at his hefty stomach.

“Nobody in the entire universe thinks you’re washed up, Dad. You premiered a new opera two years ago.”

“It was flat, everybody knew it. My best years are behind me, and that’s all right. I’m looking toward the future now.”

I thought he meant Oscar but his eyes were warm on mine.

“Does Oscar make you better? Happier?”

“I . . .” I frowned, unsure how to answer. “I’m happy when I’m with him. But he doesn’t make me better. I make me better. And . . . he makes me feel like it’s possible.”

Dad nodded, but there was something endlessly sad in his smile. His gaze drifted upward, remembering something.

“Your mom is a brilliant pianist. Just astonishing.”

My throat clenched. His eyes had drifted, the way they had that night he spoke to me at the piano. He was seeing her right now.

“Living with me, my last name, my music in the headlines, my work dominating everything—it suffocated her.”

“Do you miss her?” I glanced at the curtain to see if Alice had come back. “You’ve seemed fine this whole time, so I didn’t—”

“God, do I miss her?” He started to press a hand to his chest, then, not wanting to alarm me, let it drop. “I’m going to get healthy, Roo. But that?” He pointed to his heart. “That’ll never heal.”

He seemed proud of it. My face started to crumple, the pain as fresh as the day I’d watched her taxi drive away.

Dad leaned forward to stop me. “But Ruby, I am glad she left. She had to go. She had to. She survived here as long as she could.”

Mom was selfish. She was unmentionable. But he held no rancor. Just loss.

“She shouldn’t have left me.”