She bent down and picked up one broken piece.
“Well,” she said, “I guess you’re not performing anymore.”
My mother was standing behind her in the doorway.
She looked at the ruined violin.
Then at me.
And sighed.
“Claire, please don’t turn this into a huge scene. Vanessa got upset. You know how emotional she can be.”
I stared at her.
“She just destroyed an eighty-thousand-dollar violin.”
Vanessa laughed.
“Eighty thousand? Grandpa’s old violin?”
I didn’t answer.
That was their first mistake.
Their second mistake was assuming that instrument was the only reason I could walk onto that stage.
My phone vibrated.
A message from Maestro Adrian Cole.
Five minutes. Ready?
Vanessa folded her arms.
“Tell him you’re sick.”
I carefully gathered the pieces of my grandfather’s violin and placed them back into the velvet case.
Then I stood.
Mom frowned.
“Where are you going?”
“To perform.”
Vanessa’s smile vanished.
“With what?”
I looked at her.
And for the first time that evening, I smiled.
“With the violin you don’t know about.”
Two years earlier, I had won an international chamber competition in Vienna.
Afterward, Eleanor Hayes, a billionaire arts patron and chairwoman of the orchestra foundation, had offered me private sponsorship.
For major performances, her foundation allowed me to use a 1718 Stradivarius.
