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Gustav…”
    Lucy held up her water goblet and grinned at Gus. She still thought her parents should have let him meet Will before they made a decision, but it seemed likely to work out great. He deserved to be as happy as he looked right now, always.
    “…To their hard work and the many successes to come.”
    “Hear, hear,” Lucy’s mother said. Her dad had barely gotten in a word the whole night but now managed to say, “Cheers,” without being interrupted.
    They all touched glasses and drank, then Will said, “May I make another?”
    “Please.” Grandpa Beck held up the bottle of wine. “Anyone need a topper?”
    Aruna reached her glass across the table with a smile. She truly was stunning; Lucy’d noticed her dad and grandfather and even Gus sneaking glances all night. Everything she said came off witty and charming and smart, and her voice had a low, soothing quality. She touched Will’s hand a lot.
    It reminded Lucy of Grandma Beck and how she always touched whoever she was talking to. Lightly, and with a calmness. Not clutching or intense. Lucy missed that.
    Will raised his glass of water, and everyone got quiet, waiting for him to speak. Lucy tried to anticipate the kind of thing he’d say. Something funny? Sappy?
    He caught her eyes and seemed to lose focus for a second.
    “Go ahead, Devi,” Grandpa Beck said. “This is a ‘drink now’ vintage.”
    Will laughed and nodded at him. “It’s really a privilege to be working with this family. I’ve admired…well, everyone knows what a talented gene pool you’ve got. You’ve already made such a great contribution with your art. And so, here’s to that. And to art. To music. To the joy of creation, and the wonder of beauty in all its forms.”
    A collective pause stilled them. He was so…sincere. Could he, could anyone, really mean that? She watched him, wondering.
    The moment snapped in two when Grandpa Beck stood up – his way of ordering everyone from the table – and said, “To the piano. I can’t think of a finer moment to hear what’s in store for us.”
    The piano.
    There were better pianos out there, but this one had a story all its own. The baton was an anecdote; this was a tale. Of war and tragedy and overseas travel. Lucy tuned out while Grandpa Beck recited it to Will and Aruna. She already had the key facts etched into her soul:
    Fully restored Hagspiel baby grand.
    Made in Dresden in 1890, by Gustav Hagspiel – one of the two people Gus was named after. Him and Mahler, the composer.
    Bought by Grandpa Beck’s uncle Kristoff in 1912.
    Kristoff was killed in World War I, in the Battle of the Marne. No one in the family knew what to do with the piano; Kristoff had been the only one who played. They almost sold it before their move to America, when Lucy’s great-grandmother could see where Hitler was taking the country. They decided to ship it, as a way to honour and remember Kristoff, who should have been with them.
    It came on an ocean liner, separated from the family by six months, and arrived without a scratch.
    Grandpa Beck, as the only child, inherited it the same year Lucy’s mother was born, and determined that she would play.
    “And did you?” Aruna asked Lucy’s mother.
    “For a time,” she answered.
    All eyes in the room were on the piano. Maybe Aruna and Will were imagining its wartime journey in a below-decks crate. Lucy thought about her mom and the picture on her mom’s nightstand of Lucy, as a baby, sitting in her lap at the keys of this thing that had been a presence, a force in her life as long as she could remember.
    She mostly avoided this room now. The smell of old sheet music, and the particular view from the piano bench, brought on a combination of nostalgia for her former self and memories of the despair before she quit, those years between the Himmelman and Prague. This room had been the site of her personal high, high, highs and low, low, lows, not to mention Temnikova’s death. And Great-Uncle