Chapter 14: Live

Beau read the first page again.

His mouth moved, and then he said them aloud, because the microphone was still in front of him.

"Petitioner states that the parties have been married five years and that irreconcilable differences..."

He stopped.

The ballroom was so quiet I could hear the air handlers.

"This is a joke," he said, and laughed once into the mic. "Marlo's got a sense of humor, y'all."

Nobody laughed with him.

He turned the page.

His voice came out smaller. "Exhibit A."

It was a bank record, one line highlighted in yellow, and the camera above him zoomed to catch it.

He read it anyway, because he had started and didn't know how to stop.

"Four twelve p.m. Transfer out. Three hundred thousand dollars. To Davenport Sound, L-L-C."

On the screen behind him, five hundred people saw the number the size of a car.

A man in the fourth row said, very clearly, "That's her father's money."

I hadn't known anyone in that room knew that.

Beau's head came up.

He found me at my desk and his face went through confusion, then the start of pleading, then the smile again.

It was the smile he used on radio hosts, and it didn't work on a room that had read the number.

"Babe," he said into the mic. "We can talk about this at home."

I kept my hands on the faders.

"It's a family matter. Marlo's upset about the house, and I get it."

He picked up the third sheet.

It was one paragraph on a single page, signed in blue ink.

"I, Marlo Quist, co-owner of the composition Porch Light, refuse to license it to Lantern Records or anyone else, now or ever."

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