Chapter 20: Third Floor Window

I stood in the wings for two hours with my back against a road case.

I listened to Declan sing every song but one.

Maggie stood on my left, holding my elbow.

Skylar had a seat in section 112, seat 4, the one I had used on night two.

She had texted me a photo of the stage from it, and under it: "Go get him."

At ten past eleven the lights fell to one blue spot.

The arena went quiet for four bars.

Declan walked to the microphone with his hand on the stand.

He didn't say it.

"Before this one," he said. "I need a minute."

The crowd murmured.

"For four years I've closed every night with this song. I've said it was for H.B."

Somebody in the pit cheered, and he waited for them to finish.

"I was told H.B. died at twenty-two," he said. "A bad heart, and her boyfriend finished the song for her."

He swallowed.

"I believed it. I said it to you nine hundred times."

The hall had gone completely still.

"It wasn't true."

He looked to the side of the stage, where I was standing in the dark.

"Hannah," he said. "Come out here."

I stepped into the light.

I had worn my gray coat, because it was mine, and I had left my hair down.

Forty thousand people turned their heads at once.

My legs did not shake.

"This is H.B.," Declan said. "Hannah Brooks. She is alive."

He turned back to the crowd.

"She wrote this song in a dorm room at twenty-two. The man who put his name on it is in the VIP box."

A sound went through the crowd, a low rolling gasp.

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