Chapter 9: What August Heard

August's POV

I saw her hand shake from forty feet away.

I was standing by the ballroom doors with the hotel manager, who was telling me about the stage lights, and I stopped hearing him.

Marlo Quist sat at her sound desk with her palm flat on a fader, and the meter beside it jumped.

A woman in a gold sweater was walking away from her toward the stage, ponytail swinging, smiling at the crew.

I know what it looks like when somebody has just been told something unforgivable in a friendly voice.

I did not walk over.

That was the second time in a week I had made that choice, and I knew what it cost her.

At the party I had stood by the back doors and watched five hundred people clap for a man giving away his wife's wedding song.

I had watched her stand still in a blue dress and take it.

I told myself I needed facts before I touched anything that wasn't mine.

That's a reason. It isn't an excuse, and I knew the difference by Monday.

"Mr. Dane?" the manager said. "The lights?"

"Fine," I said. "Do whatever the sound desk tells you."

I left at two, and went back to the office on Seventeenth Avenue, which is empty on Saturdays.

Three years ago Lantern bought the archive of a dying label called Redbird Records.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Gave Away Our Wedding Song, So I Ended His Signing Day from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.