If you want to run the Mendelssohn tutti, I can turn pages. No mom. —G
Maya stared at the message on the cracked screen of the phone she shared logistics on with Adeola. She almost said no. Then she remembered Greer's stopped applause and the way refusal could be a kind of company.
They met in Room B. Greer did not apologize for her mother in a speech. She said, "If I start sounding like her, tell me to shut up," and then they played. Greer's tone was prettier than Maya's on some notes; Maya's rhythm was steadier on the hard inner pages. They argued once about bowing and settled it by trying both. When Whitney's name appeared on Greer's phone, Greer turned the phone face down and did not pick it up until they were packing.
"She's going to ask where I was," Greer said.
"What will you say?"
"Orchestra work." Greer shrugged. "It isn't a lie."
Outside, the afternoon was the pale blue of early spring. Maya waited for the bus. Greer waited for a rideshare her mother tracked. For a moment they stood like two ordinary girls with heavy cases, which was the most radical thing either of them had managed all week.
VIII.
Corbin Mayhew called from the hospital on speakerphone during Saturday's warm-up, voice thin but amused.
"Tell the kid the Prelude should not have swung that hard in bar twenty-something and also that I owe her dinner when I can eat solid food without negotiating with God."
The section laughed. Maya smiled into her shoulder. Seth relayed the message and moved on to tuning, because gratitude was useful and rehearsal time was not infinite.
The spring showcase continued without another guest solo. The youth orchestra played its Mendelssohn and a new arrangement of a spiritual that Kendra had recommended Seth look at months earlier. Maya's principal cues were clean. Greer matched her in the divisi without drama. In the lobby afterward, a donor who had emailed Orin Voss about "direction" shook Maya's mother's hand and said the concert was "lovely," as if lovely could sand down the previous week's edges.
Adeola wore her best blouse and the expression she used at work when someone mistook her for less than she was.
"Thank you," she said. "My daughter practiced."
Whitney stood across the lobby with a glass of white wine and did not approach. Greer found Maya near the coat rack and handed her a folded program page where she had written, in small print: You didn't steal anything.
Maya put the scrap in her case pocket beside a spare mute.
IX.
Two weeks after the emergency Bach, the Harborlight board held its monthly meeting in the same river-view room. The agenda included facilities, the gala, and an item titled Seating Policy Clarification that everyone understood was code.