Chapter 5 - The Page Richard Signed
Richard stared at his signature.
Nobody needed to accuse him.
He remembered.
“That was before publication.”
Claire laughed.
“You really want to do this?”
“I’m explaining.”
“No. You’re finding chronology.”
Richard closed the proof.
“I signed because Beatrice asked.”
“Then why cancel it?”
His answer took longer now.
“Because she died.”
Mara’s face hardened.
“That’s when her decision mattered most.”
Richard looked at her.
“You weren’t there afterward.”
“I was at the funeral.”
“You were not in this house at three in the morning when Claire was screaming because she couldn’t remember her mother’s voice.”
Claire flinched.
“Don’t use me.”
Richard stopped.
The sentence landed because it was the rule he had broken most often.
Claire continued:
“Why cancel the credit?”
Richard’s shoulders lowered.
He looked older suddenly.
“The foundation.”
Mara’s eyes narrowed.
Finally.
Richard had built the Vale Music Foundation while Beatrice was alive.
After her death, it became the center of his public life.
The final composition became its symbol.
Not because the music made enormous money.
It didn’t.
Because the story worked.
Beatrice, dying, alone at the piano, finishing one last piece.
Beautiful.
Simple.
False in one important way.
Richard said:
“The first donor campaign had already been written.”
Claire stared.
“You chose a brochure over Mom’s instruction?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“I chose not to let the last thing people knew about her be that she needed someone else to finish.”
Mara said:
“She didn’t need me to finish.”
Richard snapped:
“You wrote the ending.”
“Because she asked me to.”
“Exactly.”
“What does that prove?”
“That she couldn’t find it herself.”
Mara’s expression changed.
Not anger.
Recognition.
Richard heard himself too late.
He had just said aloud the thing underneath twenty years of protection.
Beatrice needed help.
Richard had experienced that as diminishing her.
Claire sat back.
“My God.”
Richard turned.
“What?”
“You’re ashamed she needed someone.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I watched your mother lose control of her own hands.”
His voice rose.
“Do not tell me I was ashamed of her.”
Claire did not move.
“I think you were terrified other people would see what you saw.”
He stopped.
That was different.
Closer.
Richard lowered his voice.
“Every day somebody looked at Beatrice with pity, she came home furious.”
Mara said:
“So you decided nobody would ever know she collaborated.”
“I decided the last piece would remain hers.”
“It is hers.”
Richard stared.
Mara continued.
“That’s the part you never understood.”
Her anger had sharpened.
“I never wanted half of Beatrice.”
“You wanted your name.”
“Yes.”
That answer surprised him.
Mara did not retreat.
“Yes. I wanted my name on the twelve bars I wrote because she wanted it there.”
She pointed toward the score.
“That is not taking something from her.”
Richard looked at the title page.
Mara continued.
“You acted like credit was a fixed amount. If I got some, she lost some.”
Nobody spoke.
That had been the architecture of everything.
Credit.
Grief.
Claire.
If Mara mattered, Richard mattered less.
If Beatrice needed Mara, she looked less brilliant.
If Claire needed Mara, Richard looked less necessary.
Richard turned toward his daughter.
“I did not think of you that way.”
Claire’s face softened for half a second.
Then:
“You didn’t have to think it consciously.”
He sat.
The ballroom beyond the doors was getting louder.
The gala could no longer wait indefinitely.
Claire’s assistant appeared.
“We need you in ten minutes.”
Claire nodded.
Richard immediately said:
“We handle this after.”
“No.”
“Claire.”
“You’ve had twenty years of after.”
He stopped.
Claire looked at Helen.
“What is the most accurate public credit?”
Helen thought.
“Beatrice Vale, with coda by Mara Ellison.”
Mara shook her head.
“No.”
Helen frowned.
Mara pointed at the proof.
“Use what Beatrice approved.”
Coda developed with Mara Ellison.
Claire nodded.
Richard stood.
“You cannot rewrite the program ten minutes before the performance.”
“I can correct what I say.”
“You’ll create questions.”
“Yes.”
“About your mother’s health.”
“No.”
“You don’t know that.”
Claire stepped close.
“Then I answer the question I actually get.”
Richard stared at her.
That was new.
Not managing the future question before anyone asked it.
Claire turned toward the doors.
Mara stopped her.
“Claire.”
“What?”
“Don’t turn this into a public apology to me.”
Claire frowned.
“I wasn’t.”
“Good.”
Mara looked toward Sophie.
“She has already been made into enough of a spectacle.”
Claire understood.
“No piano.”
Sophie looked disappointed from across the room.
Mara smiled.
“Later.”
Richard asked:
“So what exactly are you going to say?”
Claire looked at her father.
“The smallest true thing.”
Then she walked back into the gala.
Richard followed.
May you like
Not because he approved.
Because for the first time that day, he did not get to choose the wording before anyone else heard it.
