Chapter 13: The Man in the Aisle

Dax came down the center aisle with his coat open and rain on his shoulders.

Eight hundred people turned to watch him.

Phones came up in every row.

"Kiera," he said, loud enough for the balcony. "Is that true?"

She held the microphone against her chest and looked at him.

"Which part?"

"You told me you were an orphan from Knoxville. You cried about it in my kitchen."

"I told you what you wanted to hear."

A man near the front laughed out loud.

Dax stopped at the lip of the stage, and his face went through three expressions I had never seen on it.

"You knew who she was," he said. "The whole time."

"I knew who she was before you did," Kiera said.

She put the microphone back on the stand.

Then she stepped off the stage into the dark, and nobody tried to stop her.

The stage door banged somewhere behind me.

Dax stared at the empty spot where she had been standing.

"Jo," he said, up at me, with his hands open. "Jo, listen to me."

I stood up from the stool.

My knees were not steady, but my voice was.

"The show is over," I said to the room. "Thank you for coming. Your tickets are good for the next one, and I'll sing the rest of it then."

Nobody cheered.

They filed out slowly, whispering, and a dozen of them stopped at the foot of the stage to touch my hand.

I walked into the wings with the pick still in my pocket and my sister's voice still in my ears.

Jude was waiting there.

He had watched the whole thing from the dark, and his face was closed.

"Dax walked in," he said.

"I saw."

"You went white when you saw him."

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