“Did you know Midnight Music wasn’t the original name?” she asks me. “It was called something else at first.” Willa gives me a little wink. “That’s a bit of trivia for you.”

“What was it called originally?” I ask. It’s so weird to think of Midnight Music being called anything else. The name is so iconic. It’s like finding out Death of a Salesman once had another title.

Willa smiles and waves away my question with a flick of her wrist. “It doesn’t matter,” she tells me. “Midnight Music is what it says on the Tony.” She takes a sip of wine. “Original names don’t matter much. Do they? What matters is who we become.”

I’m still staring at her name in bold letters. All caps.

WILLA CULVER.

“So many people spend all their time trying to find out who they are,” Willa says. “But that’s such a passive act. What you really have to do is create yourself.” I look up at her, and she cocks her head to one side. “Who do you want to be, Avril?”

“I don’t know,” I tell her, and she sighs.

“You can’t dream yourself a life. You have to hammer and forge yourself one. It takes a lot of courage.” She stops. Takes another sip of wine. “Your mother was brilliant. She could have been anything. She could have had such a life. My God. She could have been a star.” I watch her swirl the wine around in her glass before she swallows the last of it. “I think about that a lot. What Nicole could have been. Would have been. If things had been different.”

I hand her the Tony award, and she puts it back on the shelf among the other trophies. “She could have been extraordinary,” Willa tells me. “And really, that’s the whole point of being alive, isn’t it?” She pauses. Polishes the Tony with the hem of her T-shirt. Wipes away my fingerprints. “To do something amazing with our one brief, beautiful moment on earth.”

I turn back to look at all those awards again. There are pictures, too. Photos of Willa with famous people. A couple of movie stars. Some Broadway people who look familiar. President Obama.

“Wednesday night,” Willa says, “in rehearsal. The drowning scene.” My face turns red. I feel the heat in my cheeks, and I’m glad I’m looking at the shelf. Not at Willa. Because we haven’t talked about this yet. How Cole cursed at her and pulled me out of the theatre. What happened to me before that. “You got too close, didn’t you?”

I nod. My eyes settle on a picture of Brody Culver, and I think about what I remembered that night. My mother’s scream before she disappeared over the cliff. Cole’s voice. The undeniable presence of someone behind me. That tight hand on my wrist. Flying and falling.