A Beautiful Night to Tell the Truth

How it begins

The message arrived while Mara Cole was being told how beautiful she looked.

One more lie tonight and I release the recording.

The makeup artist paused with a brush beside her cheek. "Are you all right?"

Mara turned the phone facedown. "Just a change to the running order."

Beyond the dressing-room wall, the orchestra was warming up. Twenty minutes until the broadcast. Three years since the performance disaster that had ended with her crying on camera and a stage technician losing his job.

Now the technician was waiting outside her door.

Rafi Rowe had not changed in the ways she would have found convenient. He still stood as if his first duty was to make room for other people to pass. He still noticed when her hands shook.

"They said you asked for me," he said.

She dismissed the makeup artist gently and waited until the corridor emptied.

"I received something."

Rafi read the message without taking her phone. That small refusal felt worse than anger.

"Have you told security?"

"Not yet."

"Then that's first."

"I thought you might understand."

He looked at her properly. "Understanding doesn't make me your entire emergency plan."

Mara sat. Her dress spread around the chair in a dark, expensive pool. On the monitor, the presenter smiled beneath a caption promising an unforgettable evening.

She had spent years being unforgettable for the wrong reasons.

"The recording is from that night," she said.

Rafi glanced at the monitor, then back at her. "Which part?"

She could have answered in several ways. The collapse. The argument. The moment someone told her what to say to the cameras.

Instead she said, "The part before I blamed you."

For the first time since he'd entered, Rafi stopped looking at the exits.

Outside, the orchestra reached the first clear note of her opening song.