Chapter 23: Signed

Trent signed at Maggie's counter at one in the morning, with the plumber watching.

I hadn't planned on an audience.

But the regulars had heard.

By midnight the diner held thirty people eating pie at the booths and pretending to talk about other things.

Trent's lawyer sat on the stool beside him, a tired man in a rumpled suit.

Maggie's cousin laid the pages out in a row.

Dissolution of marriage.

Return of the joint accounts, with interest.

Transfer of Patricia's mortgage records to my counsel.

And a one-page assignment, which I read twice.

"That says," Maggie's cousin said, "that Trent Mercer acknowledges Hannah Brooks as sole author of Third Floor Window."

"And?"

"Every pressing, every license and every future payment carries her name."

Trent didn't look at me.

He picked up the pen and held it stiffly.

"I want it noted," he said, "that I'm doing this to protect my family."

"Noted," said the plumber.

"No one asked you."

"I'm just a witness."

Trent signed.

He signed the first page, and the second, and the third, and then he stopped at the last line.

"Sign," I said.

"Hannah."

"Under my name."

He wrote it, and it came out cramped and small, nothing like the careful script on his birthday cards.

He put the pen down.

He stood up from the stool.

He looked at me for the last time, at the whole room behind me, at the pie and the phones and the plumber.

"You'll never sing at a table I own," he said.

"I'll sing at my own."

He walked out with his lawyer.

The bell over the door rang behind him, and the diner clapped, which was still embarrassing.

I picked up the pen.

My hand was steady.

I signed each page, Hannah Brooks, in round letters, and the ink went down black and clean.

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