That evening Ethan told Richard about the showcase while they stood in the garage, Richard sorting mail on the hood of the car as if paper could organize grief.
"A showcase," Richard repeated. "With donors. With press, maybe."
"With music," Ethan said.
Richard looked at him for a long time. "All right. If Ashcroft thinks you're ready."
"I am ready," Ethan said, and heard the echo of the line he had spoken in Studio B, and felt the circle of the story tighten.
Choosing the repertoire became a kind of archaeology. Helena suggested Mozart for elegance, Saint-Saëns for sparkle, a contemporary piece for modernity. Ethan listened to each suggestion with respect and then returned, again and again, to a Chaconne excerpt Claire had loved, and to a short piece Claire herself had arranged from an old folk melody when Ethan was small—never published, existing only in a notebook with coffee stains and a cracked spine. Helena examined the notebook as if it were a manuscript from a vanished century.
"This is beautiful," she said. "And it is yours. If we program it, people will ask where it came from."