Rachel arrived on a Saturday with a thermos of coffee and the energy of someone who had been looking forward to something.
She kissed Diana on the cheek, looked at Ethan in the hallway with the direct assessment of someone already forming opinions, and said:
"So you're the one causing all the fuss."
"Apparently," Ethan said.
Rachel looked at Diana.
"I like him," she said.
"Everyone keeps saying that," Diana said. "Come in before the neighbours hear you."
Aunt Rachel was Diana's younger sister by three years, which meant she was nothing like Diana in the ways that mattered and exactly like her in the ways that snuck up on you.
Diana was warm and narrated everything. Rachel was sharp and said nothing she didn't mean. Diana filled rooms with presence. Rachel filled them with attention — the specific quality of someone who was always, on some level, assessing.
She worked at CAA in Beverly Hills. Junior agent, two years in, with the hunger of someone who was good at her job and knew it and was waiting for the industry to catch up.
She smelled like expensive coffee even without the thermos.
She sat down at the kitchen table and looked at Ethan the way she probably looked at everything — directly, without pretending she wasn't.
"Diana told me about the lesson," she said.
"I know," Ethan said.
"She said Mrs. Holt closed the piano lid."
"She did."
"And that you played it first. The piano."
"Yes."
Rachel looked at him for a moment.
"Have you played before?"
"First time," he said.
She looked at Diana. Diana shrugged — the shrug of someone who had made peace with not having an explanation.
"Okay," Rachel said.
She picked up her thermos.
"Sing something."
Diana started to say something — some version of he doesn't have to — but Ethan was already setting down the biscuit he'd been holding.
"It's fine," he said.
He thought for a second about what to sing for a CAA agent on a Saturday morning in his mother's kitchen.
Not Somewhere — he'd used that for Mrs. Holt. Something different. Something that fit the room rather than the room having to fit around it.
He sang Where Is Love from Oliver!
Not performing it. Just singing it. The way it wanted to be sung — quietly, without pretending the question had an answer, because the whole point of the song was that it didn't.
The kitchen was very still when he finished.
Rachel had her thermos halfway to her mouth and hadn't moved it.
Diana was looking at the table.
Outside a car went past on the street and neither of them seemed to notice.
"Okay," Rachel said.
She set the thermos down.
"Diana. This is not a singing lesson situation."
"I know," Diana said.
"This is a—" Rachel stopped. Recalibrated. She looked at Ethan. "What do you want?"
He appreciated the directness. Most adults asked his parents what he wanted.
"I want to perform," he said. "Properly. Not just school things."
"Theatre? TV? Film?"
"All of it eventually. Whatever makes sense to start."
Rachel looked at him for a long moment.
Most adults when he said things like this got one of two expressions — the isn't that adorable expression or the this child is slightly alarming expression.
Rachel got neither.
She got the expression of someone running fast calculations and arriving at a number they hadn't expected but were prepared to work with.
"How old are you?"
"Almost four."
"Five when?"
"March."
Rachel nodded slowly. Looked at Diana.
"Commercials first," she said. "Clean, controlled, professional sets. He learns how rooms work. I build a reel. We see how he handles it outside of a kitchen and a converted garage."
"And if he handles it?" Diana said.
"Then we talk about what comes next." Rachel picked up her thermos. "I'm not promising anything beyond auditions. Auditions I can get. What happens in the rooms is up to him."
"That seems fair," Ethan said.
They both looked at him.
"What?" he said.
Robert came in from the garden twenty minutes later with soil on his hands and the expression of a man who had been doing something peaceful and was now walking into something that required a different kind of attention.
He washed his hands at the sink. Stood there for a moment taking in the scene — Diana at the table, Rachel across from her, Ethan between them, the specific quality of conversation that had clearly been happening before he arrived.
"Should I be here for this?" he said.
"Yes," Diana said.
"Probably helpful," Rachel said.
Robert dried his hands and sat down.
Rachel took him through it with the clean efficiency of someone who presented information for a living. The lesson with Mrs. Holt. What Mrs. Holt had said. The piano. What she thought it meant in terms of opportunity and what a sensible path forward looked like.
Robert listened without interrupting, which was his way.
When Rachel finished he was quiet for a moment.
"How disruptive to his schooling?" he said.
"Minimal at this stage. Commercials shoot on weekends mostly. TV starts small — guest spots, a day here and there. Nothing that pulls him out of class significantly until we know we're dealing with something serious enough to justify it."
"And you think we are?" Robert said. "Dealing with something serious enough."
Rachel looked at Ethan.
Ethan looked back at her.
"Ask him to sing something," Rachel said to Robert.
Robert turned to his son.
No preamble. No would you like to or do you mind. Just turned and waited, the way he asked things.
Ethan sang Where Is Love again. Same version, same delivery — the song the way it wanted to be sung, nothing added or removed.
Robert was quiet all the way through.
When it finished he sat with it for a moment.
"Alright," he said.
Just that.
He looked at Rachel. "You'll be straightforward with us. If something isn't right you tell us."
"Always," Rachel said.
"And you don't push him faster than he should go."
"Slow build. I mean it. I've seen what happens when it goes too fast and I won't do that."
Robert nodded once. Looked at Ethan.
"Is this what you want?" he said. Not rhetorically. The genuine question, asked directly, the way he asked things that mattered.
"Yes," Ethan said.
"Then we try it," Robert said.
He stood up, looked at the soil still under his fingernails, and went back outside.
Diana looked at Rachel.
"That's a yes," Diana said.
"I gathered," Rachel said.
≪ SYSTEM UPDATE ≫
Acting Fans: 1 / 1,000,000Music Fans: 3 / 1,000,000
Rachel Cross — Music Fan #3.Robert Cross — Acting Fan #1.
After lunch Rachel sat with Ethan at the kitchen table while Diana made tea and pretended she wasn't listening from the other side of the kitchen.
Rachel had a notepad. Small precise handwriting — the kind that trusted itself.
"The Oliver! production," she said. "Mrs. Holt mentioned it. Community arts, spring."
"Yes," Ethan said.
"Are you going to audition?"
"I was going to ask," he said. He looked at Diana's back. "Is that okay?"
Diana turned around.
"You want to do it?"
"Yes."
Diana looked at Rachel.
"Then he does it," Diana said. "That's what we agreed. If he wants something and it's reasonable we try."
"Oliver! is reasonable," Rachel said. She wrote something down. "It's also useful. Low stakes, local, controlled. Good first stage." She looked at Ethan. "You'd be going for the lead?"
"Yes," he said.
Rachel wrote something else.
"Obviously," she said. Not sarcastically. Just accurately.
She closed the notepad.
"Commercials — I'll start making calls Monday. Something set up within a few weeks. Between now and then, Oliver! audition and keep working with Mrs. Holt." She looked at him. "Any questions?"
"What's your commission?" he said.
Rachel stared at him.
Diana made a sound from the other side of the kitchen that she converted unconvincingly into a cough.
"Ten percent," Rachel said slowly. "Standard."
"That's fine," Ethan said.
A pause.
"You're four," Rachel said.
"Almost," he said.
Rachel picked up her thermos and stood up.
"Diana," she said. "Your son is going to give me grey hair."
"You're welcome," Diana said.
Rachel shook her head. Gathered her things. Stopped in the kitchen doorway.
"Monday," she said to Ethan. "I'll call when I have something."
"Okay," he said.
She left.
The kitchen was quiet for a moment.
"Ten percent," Diana said.
"It's standard," Ethan said.
Diana looked at her son.
Then she went back to the tea.
That night he lay in bed looking at the ceiling.
Captain Buttons on the pillow beside him.
Rachel was making calls on Monday. The Oliver! audition was coming. Everything was moving in the direction it needed to move, and for once he hadn't engineered any of it.
He'd just sung a song in a kitchen because Rachel asked him to.
The rest had happened on its own.
The work is invisible, he thought. And then, because it was true: Sometimes it does itself.
He looked at Captain Buttons.
"Ten percent is standard," he told him.
Captain Buttons had no opinion on commission rates, as usual.
He closed his eyes.
≪ SYSTEM UPDATE ≫
Acting Fans: 1 / 1,000,000Music Fans: 3 / 1,000,000
One and three.
Long road.
Monday, he thought.
He went to sleep.