He Gave Away Our Wedding Song, So I Ended His Signing Day novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Porch Light
At her fifth anniversary party, Marlo watches Beau hand their wedding song to her cousin Tilly in front of five hundred people, learns the $300,000 house fund is gone, and decides to act before his signing in nine days.
On our fifth anniversary, my husband gave our wedding song to my cousin in front of five hundred people.
He did it from the stage of a hotel ballroom, with a spotlight on his face and a champagne flute in his hand.
"Five years ago I sang my wife a song," Beau said into the microphone, grinning like a boy who can't hold a secret. "Tonight I'm giving it to someone who can carry it further."
The room made the soft sound a room makes when it thinks it's about to cry.
I was standing at the side of the stage, next to the sound desk, where I stand at every show.
I'm a live-sound engineer. I have mixed Beau's voice for six years.
At four o'clock he had texted me that tonight was a big surprise, to wear the blue dress and to trust him.
I was wearing the blue dress.
"Come get it, kid," Beau said, and held out his hand.
My cousin came up the steps in a gold dress, both hands over her mouth, laughing.
She is twenty-eight. I taught her to drive a stick shift in my father's dealership lot.
She hugged Beau, and over his shoulder she looked at me and mouthed: Is this okay?
Five hundred people were watching, and a camera from the label had swung to my face.
I nodded.
The band started the first chord, and I knew it before my brain did.
It was the song Beau sang to me at our wedding, with his hand shaking on the mic stand.
A hundred and twenty people had listened in my mother's garden.
It's called "Porch Light."
Beau told me he wrote it the night before the wedding, and that nobody on earth had heard it until I did.
My cousin sang the first verse well and the second verse better.
She sang it with her eyes closed, and the lyric screen scrolled behind her while she never once turned to it.
When she hit the key change in the bridge, the one Beau always rushed, she landed it clean.
Five hundred people got to their feet.
Beau pulled her in with one arm and raised his glass to the cameras.
"Marlo's behind this one all the way," he said. "Aren't you, babe?"
The spotlight found me.
I stood there with my hands at my sides and my face doing what it does at a sound check, which is nothing.
Beau smiled at me and waited.
I didn't wave and I didn't cry. The applause went on without me.
"Say the word," Dot muttered beside me.
She has been my best friend since we were fourteen, and she was holding two drinks she had forgotten to hand out.
"I'll find a fire alarm," she said.
"Not yet," I said.
My phone buzzed in my clutch.
It was the bank app. Transfer complete: $300,000.00 to Davenport Sound LLC. Available balance: $0.41.
I read it twice.
The three hundred thousand was our house fund, from the sale of my father's dealership.
I had moved it into our joint account three years ago, because Beau said married people don't keep separate piles.
Davenport Sound was my cousin's album company. The memo line said: Advance.
The time stamp said 4:12 p.m., eight minutes before he told me to trust him.
On the stage, my cousin was crying happy tears into Beau's shoulder.
I didn't scream. Everyone in that room expected me to stay quiet, and they were right.
So I stepped out.
I walked past the sound desk, through the side door and down the corridor to the loading dock, where it was cold and smelled of diesel.
Dot came out behind me and let the door fall shut on the music.
"He took the house money," she said. She had read the screen over my shoulder. "Marlo. All of it?"
"All of it."
"His label signs him in nine days," Dot said. "Two million dollars, livestreamed from the Harcourt. Everybody in Nashville is invited."
"I'm running the livestream," I said.
"Of course you are."
Next I opened the publishing app, the one I hadn't looked at since the wedding.
Under "Porch Light" there were two names.
Beau Bledsoe, fifty percent. Marlo Quist, fifty percent.
He had put me on it as a wedding present, with a card that said: Half of everything, always.
The label couldn't license the song without both writers.
He hadn't asked me to sign anything, because he was sure he wouldn't have to.
I put the phone away and looked at Dot.
"He thinks I'll get over it," I said. "I've got nine days to let him keep thinking so."
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