Her Husband's Favorite Guest novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Her Name on the Marquee

On Saturday night the marquee over the Tin Door said LYDIA FARROW, in black letters on white.

It was spelled right.

I stood across Fifth Street at six o'clock with my coat open over my dress and looked at it until Gideon took my hand.

"It's still there," he said.

"I keep waiting for someone to climb up and change it."

"Nobody's climbing anything. Margo has a man on the ladder with a baseball bat."

I laughed, and my stomach turned over with the twins, and I laughed again.

Inside, the room was three hundred seats and every one was sold.

I could hear them through the curtain, a low warm roar of people finding their chairs.

The drummer Margo owed a favor to sat behind his kit with a bored face and tapped his sticks on his knee.

The stage manager who was fond of me handed me a glass of water and said, "Five minutes, ma'am."

I took a long look at the piano.

It was an old Baldwin with a chipped corner on the lid.

Someone had set the green notebook on the stand, open to the first page.

"No one in this room needs you to be perfect," Margo said from behind me.

"I know."

"They need you to be exactly who you said you were on that field."

"I know, Margo."

She tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, the way she used to when I was nine, and went out to the microphone.

I heard her through the curtain.

"Thank you for coming," Margo said. "I direct a festival, and I've been a teacher for thirty years. I have taught one student who made me want to put the chalk down and sit and listen."

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