My Husband Sold Our Perfect Marriage on Tour, So I Ended It on Stage novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Muse

I post my husband's tribute with a smile, bring my sister onto the tour, and find a pencil mark in a paperback that I never questioned.

At breakfast, Brendan posted a photo of my hand in his.

He did it with his thumb, between bites of toast, in the suite's dining nook.

The caption read, "Nineteen cities. Eight years. Still choosing her."

Forty thousand likes arrived before the coffee cooled.

"Look at that," he said, and turned the screen to me.

I read the comments.

"Goals."

"I'm crying in my car."

"Wish my husband was half of this man."

I smiled at the screen and touched his cheek.

"You're sweet," I said.

He leaned into my palm.

I felt nothing.

I had expected rage.

What came instead was a clear, cold sense of work to do.

"I had an idea," I said.

"Mm?"

"My sister lost her job when the bar changed hands. She'd be good on merch. She sells things to drunk people for a living."

Brendan did not look up from his phone.

"Is she presentable?"

"She's my sister."

"Then of course," he said. "Tell her to bring a sweater. The theaters are cold."

That was how simple it was.

I had asked for something small and generous, and he had said yes with the full beam of his charm, because it looked good.

He had no idea I was bringing a cannon onto his ship.

I called Maisie from the bathroom with the fan on.

She picked up on the second ring, her voice thick with sleep and the noise of a blender.

"Is it the tour?" she said. "Are you finally begging me to come? I'm not wearing his face on a tote bag."

"Pack a bag," I said. "You're wearing it on a vest."

Silence.

"Roz. What happened."

I told her.

I told her about the gray phone, and the cufflinks, and the email.

I did not cry.

She did.

"I'm going to kill him," she said. "With a mop."

"You're going to sell his tote bags," I said. "For thirty days. Smiling."

"I'm going to need a minute with that."

"Take two. Be in Pittsburgh by tomorrow."

I hung up, washed my face, and sat on the edge of the bathtub with my tote bag in my lap.

I carried the same worn paperback everywhere.

The Lamp at Gull Rock.

A lighthouse keeper's story with a cracked spine and a coffee ring on the cover.

Brendan had read it to me, he said, every night I lay in the hospital.

He had said it in the book.

He had said it on television.

I had written that sentence myself, in the second draft of the memoir, because he gave me the notes and I trusted him.

It was the one thing about my accident I treasured.

Somebody had sat beside me in the dark and read me a story.

I had no memory of the crash itself.

I had a voice, low and steady, saying words I couldn't catch, and the feeling of a hand near mine that never quite took it.

I opened the paperback to the last page.

I had done this a hundred times.

In the bottom corner, in faint pencil, were two letters.

J.R.

Brendan had once looked at them and said, "Used bookstore mark. Probably the guy who sold it."

I had believed him.

His initials were B.M.

I ran my thumb over the J and the R.

It was nothing.

It was a smudge from a stranger's shop.

I closed the cover.

Brendan had gone down to soundcheck.

I put on lipstick, took the elevator to the lobby, and found Jack at the loading bay door with his headset around his neck, drinking coffee from a paper cup.

He stood up straighter when he saw me.

I held out my hand.

"Roz Penhallow-Schneider," I said. "We haven't really met."

He took it.

His palm was warm and rough, and the anchor on his forearm moved as he shook.

"Jack Brady," he said. "We've met forty times."

"Not like this."

"No," he said. "Not like this."

I pulled my hand back, slowly.

"I have rules," I said.

"Okay."

"I'm not telling him. Not yet. I want the finale in Chicago. I want everyone who bought this lie to be sitting in the seats when it ends."

"That's a lot of seats."

"It's the only way it matters."

He nodded once, like a man hearing a cue.

"Then you'll need someone who can run that screen," he said. "And someone who can get you a mic when he doesn't want you to have one."

"I have a sister for the first one."

"I'll cover the second."

"Why?" I said. "You have a job."

Jack looked at the coffee, and then at me.

"I like my job," he said. "I don't like him."

I let that sit.

He didn't offer more.

Before I could ask, my phone buzzed in my hand.

It was a text from Maisie, sent from a parked car, in all capital letters.

"I HAVE BEEN SCROLLING EVERY PHOTO HE IS TAGGED IN FOR AN HOUR. IT IS NOT JUST HER."

A second message came in right behind it.

"THERE ARE TWO MORE."

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