Every Song He Stole Was Mine novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Two Voices on the Bridge

"I'm not asking you to forgive me," Kiera said. "I don't have the right."

The room was dead quiet.

"I lied to a judge. I hurt a woman who never did anything to me but have the life I wanted. I went to bed with her husband so I could get close to her notebooks, and I'd do none of it again."

Her voice stayed steady.

"I came tonight to sing one song. After that you can throw whatever you like."

She set the microphone back in the stand.

She did not have a guitar.

She stood in the spotlight with her bare feet on the boards and her hands loose at her sides, and she began to sing.

It was Paper Sparrow, the real one, the version I wrote at my father's kitchen table.

She sang the first verse slow, with no band under it, and her voice was clear and small and true.

The room listened.

She sang the second verse.

I felt the hair rise on my arms, because she sang it exactly the way I would have if I had been braver.

She reached the third verse, the one I had sung on this stage in front of four hundred phones, and her voice began to shake.

"He kept the lamp lit on the porch for years," she sang.

She stopped.

Her hand came up to her mouth.

"He never asked who it was for."

Nothing came out.

She stood in the light with her shoulders folded forward and the tears running down her face, and she could not go on.

Nobody in the room breathed.

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