"She's both," Ethan said about Sophia. "But the friend part is winning."
Richard nodded. "Keep the friend part. Rivalry is easy. Friendship takes more courage."
It was the kind of sentence Claire might have said, and Ethan filed it carefully, unsure whether his father was becoming someone new or finally showing a page that had always been turned facedown.
At the academy, preparations for the showcase intensified. Helena Marie Ashcroft ran Studio B like a captain who loved her crew and refused to let them drown in their own nerves. She coached posture, breathing, entrance cues, the etiquette of acknowledging applause without looking stunned. For Ethan's solo she spent long minutes on the emotional architecture of Claire's arrangement—where to lean, where to thin the tone, where to allow the audience the dignity of their own feeling.
"Do not perform grief," Helena told him. "Perform the music. Grief will come if it is invited by honesty. If you chase it, it becomes theater, and theater is a different art."
Ethan understood more than his age should have allowed. He had lived inside the difference between feeling and displaying.
Sophia Elise Lang's chamber group struggled with a transition in their Haydn. Ethan stayed after his own rehearsal one evening and listened from the back. When they finished, Sophia looked over.