October arrived with cooler mornings and the smell of leaf smoke in the neighborhoods that still burned piles at the curb. The Mercer house, which employed a service for every outdoor inconvenience, remained immaculate. Ethan began to understand that cleanliness could be a kind of loneliness. He practiced in his room, then sometimes in the living room when Richard worked late, letting Bach and Claire's folk arrangement travel down the hallway like messages left on an answering machine no one checked.
One Sunday Richard came home early and stood in the doorway of the living room without announcing himself. Ethan was mid-phrase and did not stop. When he finished, Richard clapped twice, awkwardly, as if applause were a foreign custom he had studied for travel.
"You've gotten better," Richard said.
"I've gotten louder about being good," Ethan answered. "I was already better."
Richard almost smiled. "Your mother used to say things like that."
"I know," Ethan said. "You keep looking surprised when I sound like her."
They ordered takeout that night instead of the usual carefully plated dinner from the housekeeper's fridge notes. They ate from cartons at the kitchen island, and Richard asked questions that were not about grades or calendars: which string felt most like home, whether Helena was hard, whether Sophia was a friend or a rival. Ethan answered as truthfully as an eleven-year-old could when truth still felt like stepping onto ice.