Ethan James Mercer said, "Yes."
Richard Alan Mercer lifted one hand in a gesture that was half permission and half dare, the way wealthy fathers sometimes confuse the two.
Richard Alan Mercer said, "Then go ahead."
Ethan opened the scratched case. The violin inside was not handsome. The varnish had worn thin near the chin rest. A small repair scar ran along the rib like a healed cut. It had been his mother's, and before that her teacher's, and before that a shop in another city where someone had loved it enough to keep it from becoming firewood. Ethan lifted it to his shoulder with the unshowy familiarity of a person returning a lost limb to its place. He settled Sophia's bow against the string, felt the room lean forward without meaning to, and spoke without raising his voice.
Ethan James Mercer said, "Just don't stop me once I start."
Helena Marie Ashcroft opened her mouth, then closed it. Richard Alan Mercer's smirk froze into something less certain. Sophia Elise Lang returned to her chair and sat as if the next minutes might rearrange the furniture of her beliefs. Ethan drew breath, not for courage, but for the first honest sound he had been allowed to make all week, and the silence before the first note became a held room, a held father, a held world.
He began.