Dad grabbed a bottle of wine from the chilled cabinet, then tugged on my braid as he passed me with a wink. I joined them at the table with the last of the dishes. Win mouthed thank you to me, and I smiled back.

“So, Oscar,” Alice said. “Tell me about yourself.”

Now this was legitimately the cruelest question in the world, but Oscar considered it while he scooped wild rice onto his plate. “I am a work in development.”

I glanced up to see his eyes glint and had to stop myself from snorting.

“What an interesting answer.” My sister nodded, the very picture of politeness.

I had to hand it to her—if you hadn’t known Alice for years, you’d never guess she was interrogating you. Clearly she was as thrown that Dad had taken on a student as I’d been.

“I’m gonna start saying that in interviews,” Win said. “‘Tell us about the upcoming season, maestro?’ ‘It’s a work in development. As are we all.’” He stroked his chin pretentiously.

Oscar laughed. “Ah, you know, I’m a standard American seventeen-year-old.”

In no universe did he believe that.

“Makes the question hard to answer.”

“We’re gonna work on answering it this summer,” Dad said, breaking out of whatever mental orchestration he’d been listening to. “The composer part. The human part too. They go hand in hand.”

Alice leaned toward Oscar. “You’d like to be a composer?”

She glanced at me and I glanced back, conveying all the “Yes, can I help you?” I could in one slow blink.

“Well . . . yeah,” he said. “Not sure I can call myself that yet, but—”

“Course you can,” Dad said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Wear that badge with pride.”

“There’s a badge?” Win frowned. “If I’d known there was a badge, I would have started composing years ago.”

“Do you compose?” Oscar asked eagerly. “Is that something you’re—”

“No.” Win waved his hand in an elegant arc. “I’m an interpreter of genius, not one myself.”

“That’s not what the Philadelphia Inquirer says,” Dad said, beaming.

“They just want my body,” Win said, and I burst out laughing. Win was kind of a playboy—tousled hair, young for a maestro, out on the scene, loving it too much.

I looked back at Alice to see if I could catch one of her classic eye-rolls, but she was still staring at Oscar, squinting. Um.

“You’ll be interpreting this guy one day, Winston. Mark my words.”

“I’ve marked them!” Win said, shoveling sprouts into his mouth with gusto.

Dad grabbed Oscar’s shoulder again, shaking him proudly.

I squinted. Why was everybody so handsy with Oscar? It was friendly, yeah. But strange.

I recrossed my legs under the table so that my foot bumped Dad’s knee. He dropped his arm, glanced at me.

“When did you and Ruby meet?” Alice asked.