“I know, and I adore Marty beyond words, but . . . I haven’t heard from your mom in almost a year, can you believe it? How is she doing?”

“She’s . . .” I smoothed my hem. Over and over. “Really good! Busy. Her tour is going well.” All facts that could be easily googled.

“Well, that’s great. She deserves it. Such a talent.”

Nora watched me with taut eyes, like she wanted to go on . . .

But then she shifted, bless her, into a playful wink. “People have been asking about you.”

Oh God. “Me.”

“They want godmother gossip. Whether you’re going to follow in your family’s footsteps, carve your own path.”

Your own path. My body loosened into those words. To do that, to have the option . . .

“Whether you’re seeing anyone.” She nudged me.

I coughed on my laugh. “I’m not. At all.”

“Hmmm.” Nora swiped her phone screen. “Who do I know? Charlie Weatherby’s starting at Yale in the fall. Might be too short for you.”

“It’s really okay—”

“I’ll keep thinking. Oh—voilà.” She handed me her phone, a video already playing on its glossy screen. “Now, come on, you must have seen this. It was trending on Twitter last month!”

I don’t Twitter, I thought, watching as what looked like a school orchestra performance began on screen, shot on a shaky cell phone camera.

“He’s really got something.” Nora leaned against me to watch.

“Who—?” I started to ask, and then I saw him, tossing his head back to grin at the audience, the video finally focusing on his face.

Of course. Oscar Bell.

3.

the camera was moving closer. What were they playing? It sounded like Vivaldi, but . . .

The key shifted, the violins did a funny leap that made my breath hitch, and—it was the same theme, but now it sounded like Haydn . . . or Mozart? Elegant, silvery, impossibly clever.

“What is this?” I asked, but Nora was leaning into the front seat, saying something to her driver, so I pulled my focus back to the screen.

A teensy diminuendo and the arrangement shifted again fearlessly, swelled into a twentieth-century Romantic. Shostakovich? Stravinsky? My brain couldn’t catch up with my ears. It sounded like a storm on the ocean.

“Do you recognize it?” Nora smiled over her shoulder. “This is more your generation.”

“A . . . medley? Different periods of classical music . . .”

“It’s Kudzu Giants!” She bounced back into her seat as the traffic started moving again. “I don’t follow hip-hop either, but it’s a song called ‘Sparkler’ that’s very of the moment. And he’s done it in the style of—”

“Everyone.” I stared.

Nora took the phone and tapped the screen so the title of the video appeared: Variations on a Kudzu Giants Theme. By Oscar Bell.

One point eight million views.