No Shelter Left novel · Chapter 11 of 24
Chapter 11: Her Name on Her Song
The next night the bar on East Nashville's Gallatin Road was packed to the doors.
Jude had told her to be there, and had said nothing else.
At table four sat a gray-haired woman in a linen blazer with a Starling Awards lanyard around her neck.
She was one of the judges. Aisling knew her face from the program.
"Mae Lark," the bartender called, and the room clapped.
Aisling set her guitar on her knee.
She looked straight at the judge.
"This is called Borrowed Rooms," she said. "I wrote it this July, in my bedroom, at four in the morning. Every word and every note."
She sang it the way she had written it, slow and low, the second verse without a single stumble.
Nobody in the room moved.
When the last chord faded, the judge took off her reading glasses and set them on the table.
Somebody near the stage had been filming. By midnight the clip had nine hundred thousand views.
In the hallway by the restrooms she pushed up her sleeve. She had come in at 311, and it read 351.
When she came back out with her hands still shaking, Colby was waiting at the end of the bar.
He had a manila envelope in his fist.
"You just performed a song that belongs to Larkin Management," he said, loudly enough for the stools around him to turn. "Under a contract that you signed."
"A contract your own mother witnessed," Aisling said. "Signed over insurance tabs at a kitchen table."
"You signed it."
"Say that louder, Colby."
"I'll sue you. I'll take every cent you ever earn."
"Then do it in front of the judge." Jude's voice came from behind her. "She's at table four. She's listening."
He stepped up beside Aisling, close enough that his sleeve touched hers.
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