Then I smell the sweat on him, a clean musky scent that I'd bottle and wear as perfume if I could.

Even if you find him. Even if he didn't leave you on purpose, he can't possibly live up to the person you've built him into." It's not like the thought hasn't occurred to me. I get that the chances of finding him are small, but the chances of finding him as I remember him are even smaller. But I just keep going back to what my dad always says, about how when you lose something, you have to visualize the last place you had it. And I found―and then lost―so many things in Paris.

I like French fries," I say. I like French fries? I sound like a slow child in a made-for-TV movie.

I don't know who I am. Or maybe I do know who I am and I just don't want to be her anymore.

I realize it’s not just Willem I’m looking for; it’s Lulu too.

I know what I did to you was so wrong, but at the time it also felt so necessary to my survival. I don't know if those two things can both be true, but that's how it was.

And then Adam Wilde shows up at Carnegie Hall on the biggest night of my career, and it felt like more than a coincidence. It felt like a gift. From them. For my first recital ever, they gave me a cello. And for this one, they gave me you.