He Held Her at the Concert novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Bridge

"I learned it at a piano," I said. "In a dorm. I wrote it."

Declan put the bag of rolls down on the bench.

"Say that again."

"I wrote it when I was twenty-two. I lived on the third floor and the window faced a brick wall with one tree. I made it up over a week and a half, in May."

"You wrote Third Floor Window."

"Yes."

He didn't say anything.

I heard the freezer hum through the wall, and Maggie dropping something frozen onto a shelf.

"Hannah," he said. "That song has one writer's credit. It says 'Words and music by T. Mercer.'"

I felt the room tilt.

"That's wrong," I said.

"It's on every pressing. I've signed the contract. I've shaken his hand on the royalty split."

"I mailed him a copy of the demo the summer after I graduated. He was my boyfriend. He was an assistant at the agency. He said a producer he knew listened to it and passed."

"He said what?"

"He said no one wanted it. He said not to feel bad. He said I wasn't built for the business."

Declan sat down on the stool at the end of the bench.

His knees gave out, and the stool was there.

"Three years later," he said, "Trent walked into my first producer's office with a song he said he'd written the winter his girlfriend died."

"His girlfriend."

"H.B."

I opened my mouth, and nothing came out.

"He said she'd had a heart condition," Declan said. "He said she was twenty-two. He said he couldn't listen to the demo for a year and then he sat down and finished it for her. That's why the song had to be dedicated to her. That was the only condition he put on it."

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