Chapter 11: The Benefit

"Have you listened to it?" Gwen said.

"No."

"Lena, you have to listen to it."

"It's a title. Lots of songs have titles."

"It's not just the title. It's..."

"Gwen. Stop."

I was sitting up in bed in the dark with my heart going so hard it hurt.

"He wrote me a song," I said. "On the dock. He said nobody would ever get a copy. So whatever that is, it isn't mine."

Gwen didn't say anything for a long time.

I could hear her breathing.

"Okay," she said at last, very quietly. "Okay. Then don't listen."

I hung up and messaged Jay.

"Is 'Row F' yours?"

Delivered.

Not read.

I lay awake until four and then went and opened the stand, because peaches don't care.

Nobody bought anything.

They came, though.

People I'd known my whole life pulled over, got out, looked at me, and got back in their cars.

The feed store man drove by twice, slow.

A girl from my high school class rolled down her window, opened her mouth, and closed it again.

At noon Mom came out of the house with her phone in her hand and a face I had never seen on her.

"Lena, honey..."

"Don't," I said. "Please. Not until after the show. He's telling me after the show."

She looked at me for a long time.

Then she put her phone in her back pocket with the work gloves and picked up a crate.

The Juniper sold out by six.

All two hundred and forty seats, at fifty dollars each.

There were people standing along the back wall behind row L, and the fire marshal pretended not to count them.

The bank man was in row B with his notepad.

There were two photographers I didn't know on the aisle in row D, with cameras in their laps.

Gwen was on the curtain rope. She wouldn't look at me.

Brynn was in the wings in her blacks.

She kept smiling.

At seven fifty-five I looked through the gap in the curtain.

Row F, seat 7.

Cap. Grey T-shirt. Hands folded in his lap.