Chapter 18: Over the Speakers

I walked up the carpeted stage steps.

Emmeline held out a cordless microphone with a trembling hand.

"Say it for them," she said, very softly, so only the front row could hear. "Please."

I took the microphone, and I turned to face three hundred people in black tie.

I could not see the back of the hall past the lights.

I could see Carl at our table with his hands flat on the cloth, and an empty chair beside him.

Darby had slipped away during the speech.

"Good evening," I said. "I'm Geneva Garrard. I own a flower shop on Butler Street."

"Everything Emmeline just played is true. I said it in March, in her room, with flowers in my hands."

"I meant it. I'd have given her anything that was mine to give."

A few people sighed, and Emmeline closed her eyes.

"But I'd like you to hear what she said to me on the sixth floor last Saturday," I said. "She asked me to come alone."

Emmeline's eyes opened.

"Geneva," she said.

I lifted my chin toward the back of the hall, and I nodded once.

The speakers hummed.

Then a voice came out of every wall in the Carnegie Music Hall, clear and unhurried, and it was Emmeline's.

"I picked you out of four thousand swabs, honey."

A woman at the front table put down her glass.

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