Before anybody could ask about it, I waved to the screen. “Speaking of which, gotta jet. In boca al lupo, Win! So good to see you, Leo! Good night, Aaron, good night, Tilly!”

A scattered chorus of “Auntie Ruby”s chased me out the door. I hoped Dad would make good on that promise of a Boston visit soon—but school visits and family reunions would have to wait.

Get through tonight, and the rest of my life could finally begin. My real life.

As I passed through the living room, my eyes tethered themselves to Mom’s Steinway. It looked so lonely in the day’s last light—expectant, almost—so I walked closer and touched it.

Its fallboard was warm. Friendly.

I sat on the bench, careful not to muss my dress, and pressed my fingers to the keys, remembering the last time I’d sat here, when this was the only piano and the room was filled with people, famous friends, musicians, Arnie and Bill and Nora, both my brothers home, Alice—and Mom, frustrated, urging, “Well? Go on sweetie.”

I’d been petrified, even with Win cheering me from the steps. It was the first time I’d played for an audience of any size. It had felt like a test, and it was.

I’d played the piece I’d been working on with Mrs. Swenson—Schumann, “Of Foreign Lands and People.” Such a gorgeous song. I got muddled in the middle and Leo made this comical grimace, so I decided to start over, the way I did in my lessons.

But Mom grabbed my hands before I could, wresting them from her piano with a strained laugh.

“Anyway.” I’d felt her mortification hitting me, like waves of heat from an oven. “She looks the part, doesn’t she? All you have to do is put her on mute.”

Who was it who’d shushed her then? Not Alice, a man . . . Arnold Rombauer, of all people?

“What?” She’d smoothed my hair then, dotingly. “It’s a compliment! Not everybody can get by on mute.”

It wasn’t until she’d swept me off the bench so she could play herself, erasing my performance with a brisk polonaise, that tears started to storm behind my eyes. Leo stayed in the corner, incapacitated by awkwardness. Win started casually toward me, then got diverted, joining in Dad’s conversation. Alice went upstairs in a huff.

But Nora swooped straight in, took me aside, gave me a gift. She made me feel so special, strong enough to run back through the party, get to my room, and write down a plan—four hours practice every day.

Time to get serious . . .

I opened my eyes. Here again. There was my piano, and here was Mom’s, and here I was, not ten, seventeen, everything different.

Everything, despite it all, okay.