“You’ve met! Fantastic!” Dad filled the doorway, six foot two, wild white hair, pink forehead, nose, cheeks, gray beard, arms and legs and trunk like an oak. He strode forward with his hands out and I thought for a second he wanted a hug before he zigged left and clapped Oscar on the shoulders. “This is our prodigy.”

“Ah, I don’t know about that.” Oscar looked at the floor—smiling.

He knew about that. He knew all about that.

“Found him on YouTube,” Dad said, leaning against Mom’s piano like it didn’t burn his skin at all. “Can you believe it? I love the Internet, love it.”

Outside, the scrawniest kids I’d ever seen were lugging furniture into our basement apartment from the trunks of what now looked to be a line of taxis. A desk, twin bed, chair, low bookshelf, all of it the same dorm-room pine.

Dad laughed. “What are the odds of somebody like you going to the same school as Nora Visser’s niece?”

Oscar’s body wavered like a struck string.

Dad whapped him. “A once in a lifetime musical prodigy with a family connection to our board chair! Uncanny.”

“Yes! I mean, thank you.” Oscar beamed back, height restored. “But yeah, pretty wild.”

I tapped the window. “Dad, are those Amberley kids? Why are they—what’s with the bed?”

Dad glanced over his shoulder. “They’re moving Oscar in. I found them lazing around the common room and they volunteered to help.”

Of course they did. They’d go dumpster diving if the great Martin Chertok asked them to.

Then I turned. “Wait—what? Moving Oscar . . . ?”

“He’ll stay in the basement apartment this summer. The dorms were full and we’re between tenants—it’s kismet!”

We’d been “between tenants” for eight years, since my brother Leo got his spot with the Boston Symphony. We stored our luggage down there now. And here it was, coming back up the stone steps, one empty roller bag at a time being hauled by a bespectacled teenager wearing a T-shirt that said: Oboe You Di’int.

“Thank you again for this, sir.” Oscar’s voice was suddenly neutral, the light drawl I’d noticed gone. “I’m so honored to have the chance to study with you. The New City Symphony completely changed my—”

“The honor’s mine.” Dad waved away the compliment, turning so that all I could see was his wall of a back. “I love new talent, it’s what keeps me going.” He pointed to the piano. “What was it I heard you playing a second ago?”

“What we were talking about in the car,” Oscar said, scratching his hair so it bent like a crown and sprang back up. “The baroqueness of the bridge, you know? I wanted to try it out.”

The baroqueness. Of the bridge.

Oscar traced the keys and then started the melody again, lightly, carelessly. Perfectly.