An elderly docent motioned the herd around a corner to an exhibition gallery, where a man in blue-framed glasses was speaking into a microphone about the large black-and-white photograph of a Native American woman on the wall behind him.

“Note the use of triangles, the light here and against the facial planes . . .” He pointed, but all I could see were squint lines, resigned shoulders, a woman who didn’t want to be stared at. I looked away.

Oscar had drifted idly back into the Great Hall, peering up at the balcony bar above. A few Artemis Circle guests were up there holding cocktails, waiters circulating with canapés.

A string trio was setting up in the near corner. Two violins and a cello.

“Party or art?” I asked Oscar.

“Ah, the eternal question.” He smiled. Didn’t answer it.

I could start to see myself getting into the art side—lines, form, working to preserve history, culture. Passion wasn’t the right word, but I could make a philanthropic impact here without it rending my soul apart. Which was, you know, a plus.

Actual mingling, though? Not without Nora.

A noise from above made my head instinctively tilt to watch the string trio tune, plunk, nod, launch into song—Vivaldi . . . no, Corelli.

The music fell around us, a shower, and Oscar and I turned to catch it like we were dying of thirst. The music sang of spring, renewal, young things growing and sparking and daring and flying. Brilliant things. Genius.

Pain dug into my throat and spread roots. Love it all I wanted, it wasn’t mine.

The people in the gallery were looking at me. Even if they weren’t, they were averting their eyes, and the music was still playing, and—

“How ’bout neither.”

I blinked. Oscar’s hands were in his pockets, casual, but there was something careful in his expression.

“Neither?”

He leaned closer. “Do you think we have the run of the place?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered back, my shoulders loosening slightly as our conversation drowned out Corelli. “Nobody’s said we don’t.”

Oscar’s eyes narrowed mischievously. They darted from me to the sign reading Egyptian Art.

I grinned.

He offered his arm and I took it, gliding with Oscar in a pas de deux away from the music, away from the party, my body finally releasing the moment we rounded a corner and the sound behind us dropped away.

We broke slowly apart as we strolled the silent aisles of antiquities, stone sarcophagi, glass cases full of tiny ornate tools, textile fragments, reconstructed pottery. Oscar veered from one to the next in a looping dance, walking backward to grin at me, eyes crinkling.

I grinned back. “Okay, rebel. Be careful.”

“I’m not gonna break the art, Ruby.” He let his hand linger centimeters over a stone tablet, as if waiting to see if I’d squeal. “So. Serious.”

“You have some impulse control issues, don’t you?”