At home, Richard began clearing a shelf in the study. Ethan noticed one afternoon when he went looking for printer paper. The shelf had held financial reports and a glass award from a charity gala. Now it held Claire's framed recital program from a decade earlier, and a photograph of Claire with toddler Ethan on her lap, both of them laughing at something off-camera, Claire's violin case—the same scratched case—open on the floor beside them like a smiling mouth.
Ethan stood in the study doorway so long that Richard found him there.
"I should have put those out years ago," Richard said. "I thought if I kept her on shelves in boxes I could keep the house from hurting. It hurt anyway."
Ethan did not hug him. They were not yet a hugging family again. He nodded, and that was enough for the afternoon.
The week before the showcase, Ethan's bow—his own, repaired—snapped a hair during practice. He replaced it carefully. He checked the case latches twice. He ironed nothing, because he would wear the faded gray hoodie under a borrowed blazer Helena insisted upon for stage lights, a compromise between who he was and what the room expected. Sophia declared the combination accidentally iconic. Richard bought him new shoes that did not squeak.
On the Friday night before the concert, Ethan could not sleep. He sat up in bed with the notebook of Claire's arrangement and read her pencil markings until the graphite seemed to warm under his eyes. In the margin of one page she had written: For E., when he is brave enough to be loud. He had not been ready to read that line the year she died. He was ready now, or ready enough.
Saturday morning arrived clear and cold. The academy's main hall filled with parents in coats that smelled of dry cleaning, students in blacks and whites, the low thunder of tuning. Ethan waited backstage with the scratched case between his knees. Sophia found him there, her chamber-group dress neat, her confidence worn lightly.