Ruth squeezed Naomi's hand hard enough to hurt. Marta wiped her eyes without shame. Jordan whooped too loudly and was shushed by three strangers and did not care.
Afterward, in the lobby, Ortiz found Naomi.
"He's got a musician's stubbornness," Ortiz said. "The good kind. The kind that comes back."
"He learned it the hard way," Naomi said.
Ortiz's gaze was steady. "I heard enough. I don't need the rest unless he wants me to. My room has one rule that matters more than the others: nobody puts hands on anybody to make the music behave."
Naomi nodded. She could not speak for a moment. When she could, she said, "Thank you for saying it out loud."