Chapter 5 - Eight Measures of the Truth
Grant was thirty minutes late to the meeting he had demanded. That gave Mara time to study the foundation office: framed donor photographs, spotless white sofas, a grand piano no one appeared to play. A display case showed Arthur's early tools, arranged as if he had never come home with resin in his beard or eaten breakfast over a pile of wood shavings.
Helen sat beside Mara. Reverend Carter sat on the other side. Ray waited in the hallway, where the theater's security investigation had left him with permission to work but not to approach Grant alone.
Brooke arrived without Grant, wearing a gray jacket and the expression she'd used when their mother asked her to explain a missing checkbook.
“I said alone.”
“You texted me,” Mara replied. “You didn't issue a subpoena.”
Brooke sat. “What do you want?”
“The licensing contract. The scholarship attendance records. The first tape of Dad's composition. And an explanation of why you broke his violin.”
“You never stop making everything about that instrument.”
“Then answer the other three questions.”
Brooke looked at Helen. “Is this a legal ambush?”
“No,” Helen said. “It's a chance to understand facts before anyone makes accusations they can't support.”
The sisters stared at each other. At last Brooke took a small recorder from her handbag. It was silver, scratched near the battery compartment, and covered with a child's faded sticker of a blue fish.
“I digitized the old tapes. This is the original.”
Mara recognized it. She and Brooke used to record mock radio shows on summer afternoons.
Brooke pressed play.
A teenage voice counted, “One, two, wait, Dad, again.” A violin began an unfinished phrase. Arthur laughed. Then the younger Brooke played four notes, changed them, and tried again.
“That's better,” Arthur's voice said. “Now leave room for your sister when she comes home.”
Mara's eyes burned.
Brooke stopped the recorder before the next passage.
“Every time we worked on it, he talked about when you came home,” she said. “Even before you joined us.”
“He was proud of you.”
“You weren't there.”
“No. I wasn't.” Mara looked at her. “But I heard him tell people about you. I have his letters. You could have asked me.”
Brooke laughed bitterly. “Asked you to share Dad's pride?”
“Asked me to listen.”
Reverend Carter leaned forward. “I loved your father. I have known you girls since you were small. But we are here about children who have no lessons next week.”
Brooke looked away. “Grant says the program hasn't met the donor's targets.”
“His numbers are wrong,” Mara said. “I have attendance sheets.”
“Then send them.”
“I did. Three times.”
Brooke's face changed. She took out her phone and found the forwarded reports in a folder marked ARCHIVED. All three were there, with Grant's replies above them: NO ACTION NEEDED. These figures have been reconciled.
“I didn't see these,” Brooke whispered.
“You were running the program. You should have.”
Brooke didn't argue.
Helen returned to the licensing agreement. “Is Ellis Heritage the entity named on this contract?”
“Yes.”
“Who owns it?”
“Me. Mom holds a small interest.”
“Does it own the composition?”
Brooke folded her hands. “The registration says I wrote it.”
“The registration is not itself proof of every underlying fact,” Helen said. “Why was Mara's consent marked confirmed?”
Brooke looked toward the door. “Grant told me her old performance release covered it.”
“Did you read that release?”
“No.”
Mara wanted to shout. Instead she asked, “Did you know the contract included Dad's unreleased workshop recordings?”
Brooke lowered her head. “Yes.”
“Did you know it included the songs we taught for free?”
Brooke didn't answer.
Grant finally entered, carrying two coffees and an expensive smile. He stopped when he saw Helen and Reverend Carter.
“I thought this was family.”
“It's a community program,” Evelyn said. “You seem to have forgotten.”
Grant put the cups down. “The company purchasing the archive has advanced funds. Miss the deadline and the foundation owes the money back. We can't simply undo the transaction because Mara wants a second line in a program.”
“I never asked for a second line,” Mara said. “I asked you to stop lying about the first.”
Helen asked for the payment schedule. Grant said it was confidential. Brooke stared at him.
“You told me the deposit was refundable.”
“Under certain conditions.”
“Which conditions?”
Grant looked at his watch. “I have a call.”
Brooke stood and blocked the doorway. “You can make it after you answer.”
Mara watched her sister's hands tremble. There was fear there, but not the fear of being caught breaking a violin. The arithmetic was worse than Mara had imagined.
Grant finally admitted the advance had already been spent on gala expenses, consultant fees, and a payment to the company carrying Diane's home loan. His company.
Brooke stared at him. “You said the loan was protected.”
“It is if this closes.”
Mara pictured Diane eating soup beneath a leaking ceiling. A mother had been turned into collateral for a music deal she hadn't understood.
Ray entered when he heard voices rise, but stayed beside the open door. Grant kept his hands at his sides.
Brooke said, “You told me the deal would save the program.”
“It will save it,” Grant replied, “if you stop letting your sister wreck everything.”
Mara looked at Brooke. “There it is. He needs us to fight so neither of us reads the numbers.”
Brooke faced her. “And you think that makes what I did okay?”
“No. It means you have a choice about what you do next.”
Brooke gathered the recorder and shoved it into her bag. “You can have the tape when this isn't being used to humiliate me.”
She left. Grant followed her.
Reverend Carter sat down heavily. “We need the children out of that deal.”
Helen held up a copy of the contract. “We may have room to challenge what was represented. But we need the original agreements and the financial records. Until then, we won't guess.”
Mara stood beside the display of Arthur's tools. Behind the glass lay his favorite plane, its wooden handle dark from forty years of hands.
She had come to prove Brooke stole a song.
May you like
Now she knew someone had used the song to put their mother's home at risk.
The worst part was that her sister had helped him do it.
