I’d stared at him blankly, unsure of how to answer his question because it seemed so obvious. Of course I knew her. That was why I was there. “Yeah, I’m a huge fan,” I said finally.

I actually said that I was a fan. That’s the word I used. God.

“I mean, have you met her, in real life?” he asked.

“Oh. No,” I said, my cheeks heating. “I just admire her enormously.”

“You should meet her.”

“That’s not necessary,” I protested, but he’d already grabbed my hand and was towing me over to where his mother stood in the back corner, next to a woman in a white linen dress who was drinking a glass of red wine. I was momentarily distracted from my panic by the feel of Leo’s enormous fingers enclosing mine. He pulled me right up to Diana Robinson like it was no biggie. Which I guess it wasn’t, for him.

“There you are, Leo,” Diana said, as if he hadn’t been parked in a chair directly in her line of sight the entire evening. “And who’s this?”

All eyes turned to me expectantly. Even Leo didn’t know my name at this point. I had forgotten to tell him.

“I’m Ada,” I got out with difficulty. “Ada Bloom.”

“She’s an artist,” Leo said.

Diana smiled, a real smile, as warm as Leo’s hand that I was still inexplicably holding. “Ada Bloom is an artist’s name.”

“Thank you.” With my free hand I tucked a strand of flyaway straw hair behind my ear. Looking at Diana was like looking at a piece of art herself. She was wearing a little black dress with a beaded necklace that sparkled under the gallery lights; her bobbed hair waved around her face in something that reminded me of flapper fashion from the twenties; her lips a bright, well-defined red, the same color as her heels. I wished I’d worn nicer clothes. I was wearing fricking jeans and my purple art shirt, topped by a somewhat ratty gray cardigan my grandmother had knitted for me years ago.

And Diana Robinson was looking at me.

“I’m a . . . huge fan,” I breathed. “I mean, I love your work. Every time I look at one of your sculptures, I see a detail I never noticed before.”

“Oh? Like what?” she asked, but not like she was challenging me. Like she genuinely wanted to know.

I turned and pointed at the nearest statue: kid Leo reading Proust. “Like his shoelace on the left foot. It’s about to come untied. So many people would just make it so the shoelaces are the way you’d expect them to be, tied up neat, or maybe untied, because he’s a little kid. But about to become untied is kind of brilliant.”

I was talking too much. It’s a problem.