Page 137 of String Boys

But New York kept calling.

Kelly figured Seth wouldn’t know he knew, but Craig was over at their house almost every night, and the semisecret affair he carried on with Kelly’s mother was becoming less and less semisecret every day. He’d been the one to tell Kelly—on a note of frustration—that the opportunity to play first chair in David Geffen Hall didn’t come along more than once in a lifetime and he wished Seth would listen to reason.

Kelly had swallowed, biting his lower lip, for once—oh God, just this once—unable to put Seth’s career first.

Craig had rolled his eyes. “Do you think he wouldn’t bring you and Chloe with him? You can get a job as a graphic designer in New York as easy as you can get one in San Francisco.”

Kelly had gasped then. “But… but family….” Because being farther away had not once—not once—occurred to him, not in the last interminable years.

“Jesus, Kelly, you and Seth have managed a perfectly functional relationship for the last eight years. Do you think we’re going to just go away if you move to New York?”

But Seth hadn’t mentioned anything, in spite of an increasing number of short trips to appear there as a soloist.

So the question—Do you need me to walk away—had been facetious, but he’d pulled it out because he wanted the truth. Sometimes Seth reallywasthat flaky. Sometimes he just depended on everybody’s acceptance of his silence to not talk about the stuff that made him uncomfortable. It was the same tactic he pulled when money came up and Linda and Kelly looked at their taxable income versus what they spent and realized that Seth had been funneling the equivalent of Kelly’s entire income into the Cruz family coffers, with his father’s silent, capable help.

They still hadn’t had that conversation, and Kelly wasn’t sure they ever would.

Seth’s answer had been typical Seth.

Because why? Who am I dating besides you?

Kelly had sent back a picture of Seth with his violin. It was the only new thing Seth owned besides his tuxedos. He’d gotten it from a master craftsman in Italy, and he’d confessed, red-faced, that it had its own seat when he flew.

He’d named it Chloe.

Seth’s answer was satisfyingly fervent.No! I’m sorry! I’m just trying to put by some money so we can look at houses after your graduation!

Oh!

Well, that would have been good to know before I got all butthurt, wouldn’t it!

Sorry! I didn’t want you to worry.

Of course he didn’t.

Well, relax a little. I don’t need a house. Just you.

But he knew it did no good. Seth felt… guilty. Not about Castor Durant so much as about not being there. It didn’t help to tell him that he needed to go out into the world. It didn’t help to remind him of his gift—his glorious gift—that would be languishing, unnourished, unappreciated, if he’d stayed in his father’s apartment and lived the life Kelly had. He had an obsession with having left the Cruz family when they’d needed somebody, and Kelly hadn’t been able to convince him that the world needed him too.

But they were going to be together soon, and they’d be raising Chloe, and Kelly had jobs lined up in San Francisco, and their world—their world was going to be bright as the sun.

And as much as he loved his sisters, his mother, even his friends and his hometown, every breath until then felt like he was trapped in a white stucco cube.

They were so close—so damned close.

And this was closing night of Agnes’s play, and Seth was late, and Kelly was twitchy. Damned twitchy.

He just kept waiting for his world to explode again.

Craig was sitting on his left, and he looked at Kelly’s phone and frowned. “Anything?” he whispered, and Kelly shook his head.

Nope.

Nothing yet.

On his other side, Chloe tried hard not to squirm in her pretty dress. “Seth?”

“He should be here,” Kelly told her, thinking this was stupid. One delayed flight did not a disaster make. But the whole family was looking around, eyes darting, twitchy as hell.