[Ah, her book. She knows she should regret it, but really, she only regrets how the others treated her about it. She needed those fifteen minutes in the light; needed a lot longer than that, but at least it was enough to give her a taste. Which made plummeting back into obscurity all the harder.

She doesn't say anything about it, just tries to hide the cringe with a nod. It's too bad he couldn't have brought that book home when they were all still thirteen.]

It was. A disaster, I mean. I'd been - things weren't really...going well, at that point. Just a lot of little things. They gave me a job in a music store there, and my ear, and - it was just really shitty, for a while.

[Couldn't work. No money. No violin, afraid to buy one, let alone be around one - not to mention the small overtures to friends just proving to her that people liked her siblings more. She was already on high alert when she showed up.]

I almost didn't go. I - I shouldn't have. I really shouldn't have.

[Bits of brown paper fall to the floor between her feet while she unconsciously tears at the bag.] But I did, and I just - this guy I met, he was really nice and I - he gave me a violin.

[God this is going to be harder than she thought. At least the others were there, she didn't have to explain so much. V reaches her hand out for the whiskey again.]