CHAPTER TEN — THE WEIGHT ABOVE THE STAGE
They entered the auditorium while a maintenance worker tested the house lights.
Snow pressed against the high windows, turning them into pale rectangles.
Bernard led the group along the stage wall to a red metal cabinet that had been opened during construction.
Inside was a lever with a worn brass plate.
A steel truss carrying loudspeakers crossed directly in front of it.
Fenwick examined the narrow gap.
“Can someone reach the release?”
Bernard tried to demonstrate without touching the mechanism.
His elbow struck a speaker cable before his hand reached the handle.
“Not safely,
” he said.
Gideon opened a drawing on his tablet.
“This rig was installed from an approved plan.”
Lena pointed toward a measurement marked on the drawing.
“The final version is nearly eighteen inches lower.”
Gideon looked at the actual truss, then at the screen.
He said the lowering had been necessary to hide the apparatus behind the projection image.
Fenwick ordered the rig removed.
Martin objected that the entire show depended on it.
“Then your show depends on obstructing a safety device,” Fenwick said.
“Which means your show is not ready.”
Workers moved in with ladders and a mechanical lift.
Gideon asked everyone to clear the stage until the equipment could be secured.
Nora followed Claire into the first row of seats.
They watched the workers disconnect cables that hung like vines over the painted scenery.
“I didn’t know about that release,” Claire said.
“Neither did I,” Nora answered.
“Bernard did.”
A loud metallic crack echoed across the stage.
One of the equipment brackets slipped as a worker loosened the outer bolt.
The truss dropped several inches before its safety chain caught.
A man on a ladder ducked, losing his balance.
Bernard caught the ladder’s side and held it until another worker steadied the base.
The truss swung once, then settled above an empty patch of stage.
Everyone froze.
“Nobody moves until the lift is locked,” Lena called.
Gideon rushed toward the equipment with his tablet still in his hand.
“The anchor shouldn’t have shifted,” he said.
The worker on the ladder climbed down and sat heavily on a road case.
His face was drained of color.
“You asked us to take that out while half the weight was still hanging,” he said.
Gideon started to explain, but Lena stopped him.
“We are not doing another step without the rigging supervisor.”
Martin came forward from the aisle.
“We cannot lose the whole morning.”
The worker looked at him.
“You nearly lost me.”
That finally silenced him.
Nora moved toward the worker and offered the bottle of water she had carried from the dressing room.
He took it with both hands.
She recognized the same stunned expression she had seen on Henry’s face at the diner.
The difference was that this man had been doing exactly what he was told.
Claire called the rigging supervisor and asked for a full inspection.
Fenwick informed the board that no audience would enter until the safety issues were resolved.
Martin stepped away to make a phone call.
Nora watched him through the open stage door.
He stood in the corridor with his back to the room, speaking urgently into his headset.
Then he turned toward the old archive wing instead of the lobby.
Nora remembered his repeated glances at the leather case.
She crossed the aisle toward Lena.
“Where does that corridor go?” she asked.
“Costumes, storage, and the old rehearsal rooms.”
“Is anything there connected to the music box?”
Lena considered the question.
“The property cabinet used to hold Marion’s things.”
Nora pointed to Martin’s retreating figure.
“I think he’s going to look for something.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN — THE UNSUNG VERSE
Lena and Nora followed the corridor without attempting to hide.
A maintenance trolley blocked one doorway, and the old rehearsal rooms were locked.
They found Martin outside a storage office, speaking to a woman in a dark coat.
The woman carried a hard drive case and wore an identification badge for Whitmore Eternal.
“The replacement sequence goes in before the board reconvenes,” Martin told her.
“We do not need the old mix.”
She glanced at Nora and Lena and stopped speaking.
Martin turned.
“Have you forgotten something?”
“You said rehearsals were suspended,” Lena replied.
“What replacement sequence?”
Martin folded his arms.
“A technical backup.”
Nora looked at the case in the woman’s hand.
“Does it make Marion sing another song?”
The woman shifted her weight.
“I’m the audio editor,” she said.
“My name is Priya Sethi.”
Martin frowned at her.
“You don’t need to explain anything.”
Priya ignored him.
“I’ve been asked to replace an opening sequence with a composite voice recording.”
“Asked by whom?” Lena said.
Priya looked toward Martin.
“The direction came through his office.”
Martin sighed.
“This is a professional decision.”
“Then explain it professionally,” Nora replied.
Priya opened the hard drive case and removed a small notebook.
It contained lists of recordings, catalog numbers, and short descriptions.
She described how the team had trained a voice model on concert recordings, interviews, and privately held rehearsal tapes.
Some material had been licensed specifically for restoration.
Other clips had been shared by employees who believed they were contributing memories to an archive.
“Did those employees know the voice would be made to sing new words?” Nora asked.
“I don’t know,” Priya admitted.
Martin interjected that the estate’s lawyers were handling permissions.
Priya turned to him.
“You told me that too.”
Her tone made clear she had begun to doubt it.
Lena asked her what the replacement sequence contained.
Priya hesitated, then described a speech delivered in Marion’s reconstructed voice.
The speech announced Whitmore Eternal’s new service and urged the audience to purchase private remembrance experiences.
Nora felt suddenly cold.
“You’re making a dead woman sell your product.”
Martin stepped toward her.
“That is an inflammatory description of a legitimate industry.”
“It’s exactly what you told the computer to say.”
Priya closed her notebook.
“The recording also includes a line that Marion never said about her family.”
Martin looked sharply at her.
“That line was approved in the creative brief.”
“I couldn’t find a source for it.
”
“It doesn’t need a source because it’s an original script.”
Priya shook her head.
“It’s spoken as though she wrote it herself.”
Nora waited.
Priya took a breath.
“The line says she never loved the stage as much as she loved the empire her family built.”
Lena looked toward the photograph hanging beside the corridor door.
“She hated being called an empire builder,” Lena said.
“She used to pay for actors’ meals when a show failed.”
Martin rubbed his forehead.
“We have to give people a coherent story.”
“You could give them the truth,” Nora said.
“It won’t fit on a billboard,
” he answered.
The honesty of the reply startled everyone.
Priya stepped aside from Martin and looked at Claire, who had arrived at the corridor’s end.
“I won’t export the new version without written authorization,” Priya said.
Claire nodded.
“You won’t have to.”
Martin stared at his cousin.
“You would let a waitress and a technician destroy a multimillion-dollar opening?”
Claire looked at the dark drive case.
“I would rather lose an opening than let us put words into my mother’s mouth.”
CHAPTER TWELVE — THE OTHER AUDIENCE
By late morning, the snow had stopped, leaving Chicago bright and painfully cold.
Nora rode home in one of the company cars while Claire stayed at the theater.
The driver stopped at a corner grocery before taking her to Mrs. Alvarez’s building.
Nora bought milk, bread, cereal, and two bananas with money Claire had advanced against a day of temporary work.
She insisted the amount be written on a receipt so there would be no confusion about what she had accepted.
At Mrs. Alvarez’s apartment, Eli ran toward her in mismatched socks.
He hugged her hard enough to make her shopping bag swing.
“You came back,” he said.
Nora held him a moment longer than usual.
“Of course I came back.”
Mrs. Alvarez watched from the kitchen doorway.
“I heard about the car,” she said.
“The whole building heard about the car.”
Nora explained only that a wealthy family had asked her to help at a theater.
Mrs. Alvarez listened without interrupting.
When Nora finished, her neighbor pointed toward the table.
“Sit down and eat something before you tell the story again.”
Eli spread cereal across the table and asked whether the theater was haunted.
“Only by very expensive equipment,” Nora replied.
He laughed and asked to see the music box.
Nora had kept the leather case because Henry had asked her to bring it back that evening.
She set it on the table and opened the lid.
Eli turned the box over without touching the delicate hinge.
“It’s missing a piece,” he said.
“The winding handle is separate.”
He pointed to the small brass handle.
Nora inserted it into the opening.
She turned it once, carefully.
A faint ticking began beneath the wood.
Then a thin mechanical melody emerged, wavering on several notes.
Eli leaned closer.
“It sounds like a train that’s trying to sing.”
Nora laughed despite her exhaustion.
The melody stopped after eight bars.
Eli asked her to play it again.
When she did, Mrs. Alvarez appeared in the doorway with a dish towel in her hand.
“Where did you get that tune?” she asked.
Nora explained about Henry and the Wren.
Mrs. Alvarez stared at the box.
“My sister worked there when we first came to Chicago.”
“Did she know Marion Whitmore?”
“Everybody knew who Marion was, but my sister worked upstairs.”
She sat beside Eli.
“That tune was in a neighborhood show they did for the ushers and costume people.”
Nora turned toward her.
“Can you remember the words?”
Mrs. Alvarez hummed the first few notes, then stopped.
“I only heard the last part.”
She sang a line about leaving the lamps burning until the final worker had gone home.
Nora felt the back of her neck prickle.
“Bernard remembered four notes,” she said.
“Lena’s grandmother remembered another part.”
Eli asked whether they were putting together a broken song.
Nora looked at the music box.
“Maybe we are.”
Mrs. Alvarez told her that her sister had died several years earlier, but a few former Wren workers still met at a neighborhood recreation center.
They gathered every Thursday to play cards and complain about the price of groceries.
“It’s Thursday,” Nora said.
Mrs. Alvarez nodded.
“Then they’re probably there right now.”
Nora looked at Eli, who was already pulling on his boots.
“Can I come?” he asked.
She hesitated, thinking of the hours she had missed with him.
“Yes,” she said.
“This time you’re coming with me.”
