“I am good!” She walked over to wrap me in a dancing hug while I continued to express myself with startling eloquence. “Listen, you don’t have to tell me, but if it’s the start of something . . . ? I could not be more pleased.”

I felt a spark of surprise, but couldn’t pinpoint why. Maybe because of what Oscar had said—or because last week she’d been a tap away from setting me up with somebody named Charlie Weatherby.

“As much as you want to get away from Amberley, my dear, it’s in your veins. I knew we’d get you back.”

Amberley? What?

“It’s practically your birthright.” She brushed off one of my shoulders. “And I, for one, am glad you’re finally claiming it.”

As my stomach started a slow descent, her phone rang. She peeked at it.

“Ugh, I have to run, again, but . . . lunch soon? Monday? Meet me at my place at one and we can jet from there.” She blew a kiss and was lifting her phone and out the door before I could so much as squawk a reply.

It took me the whole walk up to my room to connect the pieces of that disjointed conversation. Oscar. Amberley. Claiming it.

I sat on my bed, stinging.

Oscar didn’t need to worry about public perception. The board chair herself applauded the idea. Dating a musical genius was my birthright, as far as she was concerned. Proximity to Greatness: The Ruby Chertok Story.

If anybody needed to worry about looking like an opportunist, it was me.

Tell the truth. If he were a nobody, no talent, no connection to music whatsoever—would I like him better?

The simple answer: Hell. Yes.

But then his music started playing in my head, that snippet from the other night, and I felt so overcome that it took lying down and staring at the ceiling to get my own gravity back.

Whatever we were, whatever this was, we’d left simple behind in the courtyard.

15.

the cure for buzzing thoughts was busy hands. The kitchen was done, the study too daunting, so I tackled Dad’s room, making the bed, placing columns of bedside books back onto shelves, removing cups and mugs, throwing away an old flower arrangement, cleaning the pile of dry petals beneath it.

I was surveying the now orderly room from the doorway with a slow, calm breath when I noticed that the drawer of one of the nightstands was closed at a funny angle.

Mom used to sleep on that side.

I went very still. Then I crossed the room in a full sprint to wiggle the drawer back into place and push it shut. It was full of random papers—one of them stuck in the back. I tugged it loose, wary of looking too closely.