CHAPTER SEVENTEEN — THE PRICE OF A PROMISE
The following morning, Claire called Nora while Eli ate cereal at the kitchen table.
The board had suspended Martin from his executive responsibilities pending an independent review of the unauthorized presentation and the company’s licensing practices.
Whitmore Eternal had also paused the sale of its remembrance packages.
Nora listened without celebrating.
“What about the workers?” she asked.
“The production crew will be paid for the canceled rehearsals and the time spent making the theater safe.”
“And the orchestra?”
“They’ll be paid in full.”
Claire hesitated.
“There is something else I owe you.”
Nora looked at the stack of overdue envelopes beside the kitchen sink.
“You don’t owe me a job.”
“I wasn’t going to offer one.”
“Good.”
Claire sounded surprised, then amused.
“Father asked whether you’ve eaten breakfast.
”
“I have.”
“He wants to thank you himself.”
Nora agreed to visit him at the hospital that afternoon, but only after she picked Eli up from school.
Before hanging up, she asked Claire one more question.
“Will the Wren stay open?”
“I don’t know yet,” Claire admitted.
“The financial problem is real, even if Martin’s answer was wrong.”
Nora appreciated that answer more than another promise.
At two o’clock, she and Eli entered Henry’s hospital room carrying a paper bag from the bakery downstairs.
Henry sat beside a window with a blanket over his knees.
He looked older than he had at the diner, but his eyes were clear.
“I heard you brought a critic,” he said to Eli.
The boy held up a drawing of the Wren with yellow windows.
“You forgot to put birds on the doors,” Eli said.
Henry laughed softly.
“You’re absolutely right.”
Nora put the bakery bag on the table.
“We brought you two rolls, and the nurse said they were all right for you.”
Henry looked down at the bag.
“You keep feeding me.”
“You keep asking me into strange buildings.”
He laughed again, then grew serious.
“I saw the recording of last night’s song.”
Nora sat beside the bed.
“Those people remembered your wife.”
“They remembered parts of her that I overlooked.”
He looked at Eli’s drawing for a long time.
“I thought preserving Marion meant keeping her voice from disappearing,” he said.
“I forgot that her life was in other people’s memories too.”
Nora did not try to soften the admission.
“You can listen to them now.”
Henry reached for the music box resting on his bedside table.
“Claire has asked the board to consider a different future for the theater.”
“What kind?”
“Performances the neighborhood can actually afford to attend.”
Nora thought of the building’s damaged seats and the cost of keeping its doors open.
“That takes more than a beautiful speech.”
“It does,” Henry agreed.
“And you should insist on seeing the budget before you believe anyone.”
Eli leaned toward the music box.
“Can I wind it?”
Henry handed him the brass handle.
Nora watched the boy turn it gently until the old tune emerged.
For the first time, the sound did not seem to belong to a wealthy family at all.
It belonged to the people who had remembered how to sing along.
