When I closed my eyes and listened, I went sunburst bright. Watching Oscar, it intensified, but then I took in the full orchestra—ninety-seven of them, my age, impossibly brilliant—and the light sputtered.

I needed to go.

Quick lean-hug good-bye into Dad’s arm, then away. Mid-house, a flash of red hair made me turn—Nora, standing beside William Rustig, Amberley’s president.

William—Bill, to Dad—was sleek, silver-blond, possibly an android. Win used to call him “Bill’s Rusting” when Dad wasn’t around, joking that everything he said was “Programmed. For. Minimal. Controversy.” Right now, Bill wasn’t saying anything, and neither was Nora, both loitering in the aisle, staring at Oscar like they were waiting for him to levitate the timpani with his baton.

I half waved to Nora as I slipped past, but she didn’t notice—a relief. I’d see her at the museum event tonight. I wanted her to find me at my best, summer lit, not here, a shadow.

I glanced back in the hope that Oscar had somehow noticed me come and go, but his entire world right now was “Mercury” and I was not even here, just passing through.

Even with my eyes focused on the path out, the glimpses of Lincoln Center that crept in were enough to make my rib cage ache. Was this how people felt after they sold their house and watched other people move in?

Don’t mope, silly girl. You were only ever visiting.

•   •   •

I was rummaging through the kitchen, typing a grocery list on my phone, when Oscar and Dad came back.

“We’ve got to home in,” Dad was saying. “You can do everything, that’s what got you here, but what do you need? What compels you?”

“Need,” Oscar murmured—and that one word was enough to conjure images of him up at that podium. “So . . . does it have to be something that strong? Can it be—”

“If you want the music to be strong, then yes, the impulse behind it has to be a cannon blast.”

“Okay, yeah.”

I forced myself to move. Added baby carrots and hummus to the list and shut the fridge, loud, so they’d know I was home.

“Do you know why I wrote The Sleeping Variations?” Dad asked.

“I’ve been wanting to ask.” Oscar poked his head into the kitchen with a quick wave hello.

I jumped, startled. By the time I recovered, he’d already reversed around the corner.

“It was the winter The House Guest closed,” Dad went on. “Nobody knew what to do with it, was it Broadway, was it an opera? I was a little lost . . .”

Muesli, tangerines, bananas, pasta went on the list. I wrestled down a grin, Oscar’s face—so excited to say hi—lingering like a mirage. Basmati, almonds . . .

“Then I met Anna.”

The phone wobbled.