Chapter 22: The Loading Dock

Hannah's POV

The stage door of Madison Square Garden opens onto a loading dock under a steel awning.

That night about three hundred people were standing in front of it.

Some of them had come for Declan.

The rest had come because their phones had told them to.

At the front, under a floodlight, stood Patricia Mercer in her camel coat.

A news van was parked behind her, and a woman with a microphone stood at her elbow.

I knew the reporter.

She was the one with the hairspray, from the diner sidewalk.

"My son," Patricia was saying, with her handkerchief at her eye, "has been the victim of a cruel hoax tonight."

"A hoax, Mrs. Mercer?"

"Every word played on that stage was altered."

"By whom, Mrs. Mercer?"

"By that woman and that singer. They have done this to a grieving family."

"Mrs. Mercer," I said.

She turned.

Three hundred heads turned with her.

I came down the steps in my gray coat, with Maggie beside me.

Declan, out of breath, arrived on my other side.

I had never been so calm.

"Hannah," Patricia said. "Dear. Please. Not here."

"Here is good."

"You've done enough."

"You hugged me on Sunday," I said, loud enough to carry, "and you took my cassette out of my coat pocket."

"I most certainly did not."

"It's on the diner's camera. You hid it in your writing desk, second drawer, under the checkbook."

I let the crowd hear the next part.

"I took it back on Tuesday night, in front of your son and a doctor you brought to have me locked up."

The reporter's head snapped around.

"A doctor?" she said.

"With papers. For a few weeks upstate. Voluntary, if I signed."

"This is a lie," Patricia said.

"Ma'am?" said the reporter, and lifted her phone. "I received an audio file at nine-forty tonight."

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