Half a Life in Regret, Half a Life in Song

I heard my husband give away my song while I was holding the coat I had brought him. The Marlowe Theater smelled like damp wool, lemon polish, and the burnt coffee volunteers kept pouring into paper cups. I stood beside the stage door with Owen's charcoal coat folded over one arm. Beyond the curtain, he leaned into the microphone beneath a wash of amber light. "This is the song that saved us," he said. The audience quieted. I knew which song. I had written it on the night our daughter was born, while Owen slept in a plastic chair and the hospital rain tapped against the window. I had used a melody my mother used to hum while washing dishes, and words I was too young to say out loud to anyone. For years, I'd performed it at bars and open mics. Then Owen made a demo. The song got picked up by a radio station, and the rest of my life became a sequence of small permissions. He could play it at the fundraiser. He could arrange it. He could tell the story of how it came to be. I hadn't known he planned to call it his. "I was terrified I'd be a terrible father," he continued. "I went home and wrote this for my little girl." A woman near the front wiped at her eyes. People turned toward our daughter, June, seated in the second row. At twenty-two, she had Owen's dark hair and my habit of pressing her thumb into the side of a finger when she was upset. Her hand was locked around the program in her lap. I put Owen's coat down on a chair. The stage manager, Kit, saw my face and stepped close. "Lena, you all right?" "No." Kit glanced toward the stage, then back to me. "Do you want me to stop the feed?" The theater had a local television crew filming Owen's farewell performance. His label had bought the broadcast rights. This was supposed to be a tribute to the man who'd spent thirty years touring and recording. The song he was introducing would be the final number. I could hear my own voice in the piano chords. Owen had changed the key to suit his range. He'd softened the second verse. But the bones were mine. "Not yet," I said. He sang the first line. A memory came back so sharply that I felt it like a small cut: me at the upright piano in our first apartment, one hand over the keys, the other holding a bottle for a baby who wouldn't sleep. Owen had come in from a late session and asked what I was playing. I told him the song was unfinished. He said it was beautiful and offered to record a demo. "Let's see if we can get it out into the world," he had said. I believed him. After the show, the crowd pressed around him in the lobby. People thanked him for the song. One woman told him she'd played it at her father's funeral. Owen took her hands and listened with the solemn attention that had made him famous. June came to me instead. "You knew he was going to say that?" she asked. "No." "Did you write it?" "Yes." She looked toward her father. He was smiling for a camera. "Why did you let him take credit?" The question landed harder than the lie itself. "I didn't let him take it," I said. "I let him keep it." June looked at me for a moment, then glanced down at the folded program. "Is there a difference?" Before I could answer, Owen joined us. "There's my girls." He kissed my cheek. "Did you like the new arrangement?" "No," June said. His smile slipped. "Not your kind of thing?" "Not your kind of song." The lobby noise seemed to draw away from us. Owen's gaze moved to me. "Lena?" "You said you wrote it." "I said I wrote it for June." "You said you wrote it." "That's how people tell a story." He kept his voice low, his hand resting on my elbow. The gesture looked affectionate to anyone watching. "We can talk at home." "We are talking now." His fingers tightened, then relaxed. "The concert's being announced tomorrow. The song is on the album. You know how long this has been in motion." I did. I'd spent months sorting his old recordings because he said he wanted to leave behind a clean archive. I'd labeled tapes, copied contracts, and found the notebook where I'd written the song. He'd thanked me with a kiss on the forehead and a promise that once the tour ended, we'd finally take a trip together. Now he wanted a farewell concert built around the story of my song. "Did you list me as a writer on the new album?" I asked. "Of course you're credited." "Under my name?" He didn't answer quickly enough. June stepped between us. "Dad." Owen looked at her, tiredness arranging itself on his face like a familiar mask. "This isn't a conversation for the lobby." "No," I said. "It isn't." He walked away to greet the station manager. June handed me the program. On the page for the final number, beneath the title "Home Before Morning," the credit read: Written by Owen Bell. I slid the paper into my bag. For the first time in years, I didn't reach for my husband's coat.