Madly Yours novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: Encore

I looked at her the way I'd looked at everyone for thirteen months.

Polite.

Blank.

A little puzzled.

Allegra patted my cheek and walked out the loading dock door.

Then I took my phone out and stopped the recording.

Eleven hours, fourteen minutes.

I scrolled back to the last two minutes and played them against my ear.

Five thousand dollars to make you deaf.

He wanted ten. I talked him down.

My hands started shaking then, not before.

I walked out the stage door into the cold.

Leland was out of the car before I reached it.

"What happened?"

I held the phone up to his ear and played it.

Then he said, very quietly, "Where is she?"

I shook my head.

I took his hand and pulled him toward the stage door.

"You said the door," he said. "Not one step farther."

I'm saying come in.

The gala piano sat under the work light with its lid shut.

I lifted it.

Eleven strings lay curled across the plate.

Leland looked at it and swore, long and creative, the way Gran did when she lost at cards.

I wrote on my pad.

Show's at eight tomorrow. New strings stretch and go flat. You tune them, and tune them again.

"So we have all night."

I looked at him.

We?

He took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves.

"Tell me which end of the hammer is the handle."

I called my old boss.

He came in forty minutes, in a raincoat over his pajamas and slippers.

The stage manager came twenty minutes after that, with a box of doughnuts.

The young stagehand with the buzz cut came too, and stayed.

I made the loops and wound the coils onto the tuning pins.

Leland held the flashlight where I pointed, for hours, without one complaint.

Around two in the morning he started handing me the right tool before I asked.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Madly Yours from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.