Chapter 18
Madeline
February 2026
It was seven years almost exactly to the date of her failed Juilliard audition that Madeline took a taxi from her apartment in Paris to the airport for the flight that would bring her to the world her mother had left behind. In the back seat of the cab, she tried to warm her hands and watched the gray and drizzly Parisian streets fly by, thinking of that long-ago morning when she and Diana had flown from Michigan to the East Coast for the audition meant to change everything for her. When she closed her eyes, she pulled up an image of her mother in her mind’s eye, remembering the little smile Diana always gave her when she spotted her from the audience, a smile that told Madeline this is no big deal; go show them what you’re made of . How she wished her mother was coming with her. How she ached to see her for just one more minute. How she wished she could say, I’m sorry; there was so little I ever knew about you; I wish I could have understood how much you gave up for me.
It made her wonder what she would have to give up when she, too, became a mother. But she had the sense that it would come easily to her; she would give of herself, give everything she was out of a powerful love. Greta had said it was instinctual.
Just then, as though he knew she was struggling, Henry texted.
HENRY: Just woke up. The jet lag isn’t too bad yet. See you in a few hours!
HENRY: I love you!
Madeline sent back five hearts. Tears sprang to her eyes. Henry had left LA two days ago, eager to get a head start on dealing with the jet lag before her arrival. And he’d said he was tired of LA, tired of the smog and the expenses and the people. He wanted a vacation. “Nothing like chilly Poland this time of year!” he’d joked over the phone—during calls that had been more and more frequent since their romantic Christmastime.
They still hadn’t mentioned his idea to get engaged, but it bubbled around them, supporting them in a cloud of love and understanding. Maybe Madeline would be ready soon. But she knew there was no pressure. Although he was thousands of miles away, Henry was on her side.
When the taxi reached Charles de Gaulle Airport, Madeline got out and checked her bag and went through security. She tried hard to imagine her mother at age nine, maybe going through another version of security, saying goodbye to a life and a language that she would never know again. How bizarre that she’d never taught Madeline to speak Polish! She wondered how much of Diana’s inner monologue had been a language that Madeline herself didn’t know. She wondered how lonely that had made her mother.
At a little coffee place near Madeline’s gate, she checked her messages to see that David had sent a number of photographs from last night’s performance. Privately, he’d told her he’d thought she would have moved on by now, away from Paris, perhaps to do her own thing or to do classical music again. But Madeline had said, “Jazz opened my heart to music again. How can I turn my back on it?”
“Greta tells me you’re still dating her grandson,” David had said, poking around, she assumed, to see if she was leaving soon for romantic reasons—reasons that involved engagements and the buying of houses and the planning for children.
Madeline had smiled. “He’s coming to Europe for a little while.”
It felt impossibly wonderful—like nothing she could have imagined just a year ago, when she’d seen Henry on that plane and thought it was time for my life to begin. Now, they were going to build a life in Paris. They were going to discover what it meant to be together—in a foreign place.
What was more, Henry was no longer sure if the movie he was set to make next in LA would ever actually be filmed. They’d hit a snag. The production company was wavering on how much they could actually offer. “But there will be more ideas,” he promised both her and himself. “It’s never over.”
Madeline knew he was right—that he was the kind of man to continue to strive for greatness, no matter what.
The flight from Paris to Warsaw took two hours and fifteen minutes, during which time Madeline listened to the recordings from the previous few jazz performances and made notes about what worked in her solos and what didn’t. She felt as though, with jazz, she could constantly evolve in ways that classical didn’t allow. She wondered what Barbara Nowak would say about jazz—and dreaded learning. She assumed Barbara, like all women in the classical music world, looked down on anything that wasn’t pristine and very old. By comparison, jazz was ragged and messy and new. Diana probably would have hated it, too.
Madeline let herself think, for just a moment, that Diana and Barbara would be exactly the same; that meeting Barbara would be like seeing her mother again. But she banished that thought just as soon as it came into her head. It was dangerous.
Madeline’s plane landed at one in the afternoon. Near the baggage claim, she hovered, waiting and looking for her suitcase. When it surged out, she leaped for it and hauled it onto the gleaming floor, ready to hurry off to find Henry. His texts suggested he was back at the hotel that Barbara Nowak had rented for Madeline—a three-room suite in the town square and three blocks away from where Barbara was set to perform that night. Of course, Madeline hadn’t told her grandmother that she was going to bring a man with her. She hadn’t spoken to Barbara at all, in fact, and had expressed every bit of information required of her to Aleksander, a man who confused her. Was he Barbara’s relative? A worker? A younger romantic interest? It was strange. But every time that Madeline spoke with Aleksander over the phone, he grew more less comprehensive to her. She couldn’t get a clear picture.
Aleksander had said that Barbara was very excited to meet Madeline. To this, Madeline wanted to ask, then why can’t she come to the phone and tell me that herself?
When Madeline came out of baggage claim, her eyes flitting over the taxi signs, she heard her name in what was the most beautiful voice she’d ever heard. She whipped around and found Henry, standing with a massive bouquet of red roses and a big grin. Madeline rushed through the airport and threw her arms around him. It now felt insane to her that they’d ever spent more than a few seconds apart. They kissed, and it felt as though they were the only two people in the arrivals hall, as though their hearts beat as one. But when their kiss broke, Madeline took a staggered breath. With Henry there, she had to stop pretending everything was all right. She had to acknowledge real pain.
Henry’s eyes intensified. “What’s going on?”
Madeline shook her head and pressed her nose to his. “I’m nervous for tonight.”
“I’ll be right there beside you,” Henry promised her. “We can leave whenever you want.”
Henry and Madeline took a cab back to the hotel. When it snaked around the circle driveway, Madeline tilted her head to try to take in the enormity of the grand hall, its gold-laced windows, and its elaborate sculptures. A few bellhops came out immediately to welcome them in a mix of Polish and English and take her bags to their room. It seemed that they already knew who Madeline was—and it occurred to Madeline that this was because she had her grandmother’s face, or the version she’d carried around with her forty-plus years ago. Did everyone in Poland know the beauty of a classical pianist? Was everyone here really so cultured? The hotelier came to the foyer to welcome her with flutes of champagne. She was in her late thirties with deep blond hair and a smart mauve suit. She shook Madeline’s hand and said, “We are so pleased to welcome you. Your grandmother booked her favorite room in the hotel. Perhaps Mr. Crawford has already informed you of its beauty?” She smiled hopefully at Henry, who nodded with enthusiasm.
“It’s something special,” he said.
Upstairs, Madeline discovered the most sensational suite she’d ever seen. With its ornate velvet sofa and its floor-to-ceiling double-wide windows and its hand-stitched rugs and double-king-sized bed, it spoke of royalty and money. Madeline sat at the edge of the bed and gazed through the window at downtown Warsaw, a city she’d dreamed of all her life. From here, she could make out the top of the opera house, where Barbara would be performing later. She wondered where Barbara was just then and realized with a funny jolt that Barbara was surely practicing—that the majority of her life had been spent practicing. By contrast, Madeline hadn’t spent more than three and a half hours at the piano in one sitting since she’d begun her “career” as a jazz musician. She’d explored Paris and eaten croissants and fallen in love.
Had Barbara ever been in love? Had she loved her husband—the man who’d taken Diana to America? Madeline surged with questions.
There was a knock on the door, and Henry hurried to answer it. A woman in a hotel uniform wheeled in a silver tray upon which was placed several gleaming platters and another bottle of champagne. In a wavering English, she announced that Barbara had ordered Madeline her favorite foods to be eaten during her afternoon rest. An envelope was tucked between the plates with Madeline’s name on it. When the woman left, Madeline took a breath and tugged it open to read, in perfect English: There is a dress waiting for you in the closet. A car will be sent to you at six thirty sharp. Madeline passed the note to Henry, who nodded.
“It’s all so secretive,” he said.
Madeline waved her hands. “I have this feeling she’s playing a weird game.”
They investigated the food: delicious pierogies and soups and sausages and little fruits and vanilla pudding and cream. Madeline ate slowly, shifting the flavors over her tongue, and tried to imagine her mother as a young girl, eating like this. Diana had almost never cooked Polish food, and Madeline wondered now if it was because the memories surrounding it were too painful.
In the closet was a black velvet dress not unlike what she’d worn to her Juilliard audition. Madeline wondered if somehow, Barbara knew that.
Madeline and Henry spent the afternoon wandering the glossy streets of Warsaw, holding hands and hardly speaking, kissing in plazas and drinking coffee. When they returned, Madeline put on the velvet dress and touched up her makeup, then waited for the car to arrive. She’d told Henry to meet her at the opera house at the eight p.m. start time. Henry kept reminding her that he was just down the road, just a phone call away. When the car pulled up, she hugged him so tightly that tears sprang to her eyes. “I love you,” she whispered in his ear.
“I love you,” he said, “so much.”
I will always have this , she reminded herself. But the minute she thought it, she felt naive. Love was never a guarantee. After all she’d been through, how could she forget that?
The drive to the opera house took two minutes and made her think she really should have walked. But the minute she arrived, she was ushered through a back hallway and behind the stage to a dressing room. A door opened, and she stepped into a room with an ornate and old-fashioned stage desk lined with bulbs and dotted with makeup. To the left sat an open grand piano, which still seemed to vibrate, as though whoever had been playing it had only just removed their hands from the keys. To the right, by the window, stood a woman in her sixties, facing the plaza, dressed in an immaculate and sophisticated black dress. Her silver hair was piled ornately. This was Barbara Nowak. This was Madeline’s last remaining relative. Madeline’s heart pulsed.
She didn’t know what to say. The door closed behind her. They were alone.
For what felt like a very long time, Madeline watched Barbara, whose eyes remained on the plaza outside. Madeline thought she was going to faint.
Finally, Barbara tilted her head and said—in a British-tilted accent that hardly told of her Polish roots, “You play beautifully.”
Madeline’s heart leaped into her throat. “Thank you?”
Barbara turned around to look at her. Madeline had the sense that she was being scrutinized.
“Of course, in your technique, it’s clear that you took many years off,” Barbara said. “Years that you cannot get back. But I’ve spoken to friends and colleagues about this. We sense a renewed and powerful strength in your jazz playing—proof that you’ve discovered a new emotional pathway for yourself in the music. It’s confounding. Several of my colleagues were quite excited, I can tell you that. I’ve suggested that going to Juilliard might have stripped away that emotionality. Maybe you would have started to play just like everyone else. That’s what Juilliard does. They make carbon copies of the same musicians. Everyone has to sound like the old recordings. Otherwise, they’re nothing.”
Barbara took several steps closer and showed her small, pearl-like teeth. Was that a smile? Madeline wasn’t sure, so she kept her own lips pressed tightly closed.
“Of course, I desperately wanted you to go to Juilliard,” Barbara said. “I kept tabs on the entire process. In fact, I had a mole in Juilliard itself, whom I told to call me as soon as you’d auditioned and tell me what the status was. I could hardly sleep the night before. You see, when I was first performing as a young girl, I wanted desperately to go to the United States and attend Juilliard. But it wasn’t possible. The Iron Curtain kept me from the great arenas of the Western world, so I threw myself into the East. I have no regrets. It is because of the East that I was able to have the career I did.”
Madeline could hardly fathom this. Her grandmother had known about her Juilliard audition?
Barbara stepped closer, so close that Madeline could smell the intensity of her floral perfume. She didn’t like it. It was too extreme, too old-fashioned.
“I thought your career was over,” Barbara said. “You faded out of the cultural conversation, and I thought—that was that. What a disaster that was. And then, imagine my surprise when a colleague went to Paris on vacation and wandered into a little jazz bar. She took a photograph of you and sent it with a caption, something like Barbara Nowak’s mini-me. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Was this really the granddaughter I’d lost track of? The master pianist granddaughter who’d turned her back on music to live in such a heinous place as Los Angeles?”
Madeline’s stomach was in knots.
“I tried to get my hands on every single one of the recordings from your previous few months in that jazz quintet,” Barbara said. “You started out sloppily enough, as was to be expected, but you really hit your stride in mid-October, early November. Goodness. I think you might be the best jazz pianist I’ve ever heard. I’m sure you know, as a classical pianist, I don’t always have time for that whole world.” She made a dismissive gesture, circling her hand. “But if anything, in opening that door for yourself, you’ve stepped closer to mine again.” She raised her chin and looked Madeline dead in the eyes. “I have a proposal for you.”
Madeline couldn’t breathe.
“It will take time and effort and practice, practice, practice,” she said. “But I want to showcase your talents at a concert in Warsaw this autumn. It would mean leaving Paris, leaving your jazz quintet, and studying full-time with me, but it would also mean returning to your classical roots, joining me on the major stage, and taking the ‘crown’ that was always meant to be yours. You were something special. You still could be.”