Rose and Bobby brought the baby home from the hospital and set up her crib next to the window in their bedroom. Carrie's pink extravaganza suite wasn't finished yet, and besides, the new parents wanted to keep her close to them. One night when Carrie had been home for about six weeks, Rose woke up to hear a noise coming from Carrie's crib. The baby was cooing and gurgling, and the sound was so musical that if you wanted to stretch the point just a tad, you could say she was humming. Carefully, so she wouldn't wake Bobby, Rose got out of bed and tiptoed to the window. Carrie was lying on her back, her baby pretzel spine curled up so her feet were in her hands, and she was staring out the window at the moon, which was—for once—clearly visible in the Manhattan sky as she cooed. Or hummed.

“She's singing to the moon,” Bobby whispered in Rose's ear. He'd gotten out of bed and was standing next to her. He looked down at his little daughter with shining eyes. “My kid sings to the moon,” he whispered again.

The two of them had stayed there watching their brilliant baby until she turned to look at them. She let go of her feet and favored them with a little wave of her fingers, and then drifted off to sleep. Her parents went back to bed. But when Rose woke up a couple of hours later to nurse Carrie, Bobby was gone. She went into the living room and found him sitting at the piano, working.

“I'll come to bed in a little while,” he said. But he'd stayed up for the rest of the night. In the morning, he was still there.

“Listen to this,” Bobby said when Rose walked in, and he started to play the song he'd been working on through the night. The melody was sweet and simple and so light that the notes seemed to melt into the air after he touched the piano keys.

“It's the prettiest thing you've ever written,” she said.

“It's called ‘Carrie's Moon Song.’ ”

Even though she knew he wouldn't, Rose hoped he was going to keep the song as his gift to the baby, that it would be something private that would stay between the three of them. But of course it was going into the score of his new musical. “It's the first thing I've written for it,” he said.