Chapter 1 - Twenty Minutes Before the Downbeat
The violin split with a sound like a door being kicked in.
Mara Ellis watched her older sister brace the instrument against a dressing-room bench and drive her knee into its hollow wooden body. The top cracked. The ribs gave way. The strings held the broken pieces together for one bewildering second before a tuning peg snapped loose and skittered across the tile.
Outside the door, an audience of eight hundred was finding its seats. In twenty minutes, Mara was supposed to walk onstage and play the piece her father had spent the last summer of his life writing with her.
She couldn't move.
Brooke stood in a red sequined gown, holding the wreckage by its neck. “You could have just given me the black dress.”
Mara wore the dress in question: plain black satin, fitted at the waist, with a little silver clasp her father had soldered onto it years before. Her dark-brown hair was pinned into a loose updo, and silver earrings moved against her neck when she breathed. She had saved for the dress over twelve months of teaching. Brooke, whose blonde hair was swept into a flawless formal style, had arrived demanding to wear it to the gala reception, although she'd brought a gown of her own.
“You asked me ten minutes ago,” Mara said. “I said no.”
“You always have to make me ask twice.”
Brooke dropped the violin. Mara caught it before the broken edges struck the floor. A splinter caught her palm. She barely felt it.
Her father, Arthur, had built this violin in a rented storefront after losing his job at a furniture factory. He had drawn a tiny blue line beneath its chin rest because, as a child, Mara could never find the right place to hold it. He used to say, 'There. Even on a dark stage, you'll know which way is home.'
Mara brought the fractured instrument against her chest.
“Daddy made this,” she whispered.
Brooke laughed, but something uncertain crossed her face. “And I'm the one who kept his workshop from being sold after he died. You think sentiment pays bills?”
At the vanity, Mara's phone lit up with a message from conductor Adrian Park: HOUSE OPEN. ARE YOU READY?
She put the broken violin in its velvet-lined case with deliberate care. If she hurried, the loose strings would pull more wood away.
Brooke watched, irritated by the silence. “You're done tonight. Tell Adrian your hands are shaking. Tell him you don't feel well.”
“No.”
“I can make one call and have you taken off the program.”
“You've been making calls behind my back for years.”
The dressing-room door opened. Grant Vale, Brooke's boyfriend and the gala's operations director, entered holding a clipboard. His smile disappeared when he saw the instrument.
“What happened?”
“An accident,” Brooke said instantly.
Mara looked up. “She broke it.”
Grant closed the door. “Mara, this is a donor evening. We don't need a scene.”
“Then let me get another violin.”
Grant reached for her case. “I'll take care of that.”
Mara clamped her hand around the handle. “Don't touch it.”
He grabbed her wrist and tried to twist the case out of her grip. Pain shot through her fingers. She pulled back, hitting the vanity with her shoulder.
“Grant. Let go.”
He raised his free hand as if to strike her.
A man appeared in the doorway, his broad shoulders nearly filling it. Raymond Ortiz, sixty-four, Arthur's oldest friend and the theater's instrument technician, had a weathered square jaw, close-cropped graying hair, heavy brows, and the tough, restrained presence of an old action-film hero. A younger man might have shouted. Ray simply saw Grant holding Mara and moved.
“Hands off her.”
Grant swung toward him without releasing Mara. Ray caught Grant's forearm, pulled Mara free, and drove one hard punch into Grant's jaw when Grant lunged again. Grant stumbled into a chair and sat there, stunned. Ray stopped immediately, putting himself between them.
“Stay there,” he said. “Security's coming.”
Mara pressed the case against her body. Tears ran down her face, irritating her more than the cut in her hand.
Ray saw the broken violin and went white. “Oh, kid.”
“Don't,” she said. “If you sound sorry for me, I won't be able to stand up.”
“Then stand up because Adrian has a spare instrument in the orchestra locker. You played it for the seating rehearsal last month. I checked it myself.”
She took a breath. “The bridge is a little high.”
“I lowered it yesterday.”
Even now, she almost smiled. He had remembered the smallest complaint.
Brooke recovered first. “He assaulted Grant. You'll both be thrown out.”
Ray took his phone out. “The hallway camera sees this door. So do the two stagehands behind me. We can sort out who did what without you narrating it.”
From the hall, one stagehand called security. Another stepped forward to help Mara carry the case. Mara shook her head. She needed to carry it herself.
The spare violin waited in a gray case just outside the rehearsal room. Mara lifted it, tested one note, and knew she could play it. Not the same sound. Not the same weight. But a working instrument, and twenty minutes were becoming twelve.
Adrian arrived with the evening's printed program. “Mara, what happened to your hand?”
“Later. Is the performance still mine?”
“It is if you want it.”
She took the program, intending to check the running order. Above the name of the piece—THE RIVER BETWEEN US—was a line that had not appeared on yesterday's proof.
COMPOSED BY BROOKE ELLIS. ARRANGED BY ARTHUR ELLIS.
Mara stared. She had written the central melody at sixteen. Her father had built the orchestra around it. Brooke had contributed eight measures, and Mara had never denied that.
“Who changed this?”
Adrian looked at the page. “The foundation sent revised credits an hour ago. Grant said the family approved them.”
Mara glanced back down the hallway. Brooke stood in the doorway beside the man she'd just watched attack her, smoothing the sequins of her gown.
She wasn't smiling about the dress anymore.
Mara turned the program over. On the back, beneath the donor acknowledgments, a sentence appeared in small print: ALL PERFORMANCE AND RECORDING RIGHTS CONTROLLED BY ELLIS HERITAGE MUSIC, LLC.
Brooke had never broken the violin because of a dress.
May you like
She had broken it because Mara was the only person in the building who could tell the audience the name on the program was a lie.
And the stage manager was already calling, “Soloist to places.”
