“Oh, that’s a perfect description! I might borrow that line in a lyric. We’ll be upstairs, David.”
“I’ll call when it’s ready,” he said.
Evie followed Maggie up the staircase. The room next to the master bedroom had been transformed into a dressing room. A pair of closets were being filled with custom-made stage gowns. “I’m unpacking the professional apparel in here, as it would take over the master bedroom if I let it. I’m working my way through the wardrobe boxes. If you want to continue hanging those dresses, I’ll match up the shoes. The trick is to locate the ribbons sewn into the shoulders, so when you put them on the hanger, it’s the ribbons holding the weight rather than the shoulder material.”
“I can do that.” Evie understood clothes well enough to appreciate the skill that had gone into crafting these gowns. Boxed individually, they were layered in tissue paper and grouped together within larger traveling wardrobe boxes.
She encountered a lemon-yellow silk in the first box and nearly sighed with delight at its beauty. Stage lights hitting it would make the fabric shimmer like the early sun. The perks of a performing career are clothes at this level of design, she thought. She carefully lifted out the dress and hung it on one of the padded hangers, slipped the ribbons into place, added it to the others in the closet.
“David said you’re singing tomorrow late in the program. Will you be able to join him for the meal?” Evie asked.
“I’ll be missing dinner. If I want to get through a performance, I don’t dare touch anything in the hours before I’m on. It’s butterfly city.”
“After all these years?”
Maggie laughed. “When I started this career, I didn’t know what nerves were. A performance is nothing but things that can go wrong. What if I miss the pitch on a high note, or mistime a breath and can’t hold the tone, or draw a blank on the words as I begin the second verse of a song I wrote? I love singing, I love the crowds and the enthusiasm and people enjoying the music with me, yet still I’m terrified at being the one leading the experience. Music is to be shared, but I find the recording studio so much easier than live performances. It’s free do-overs whenever I need them.”
“Will you ever quit performing live?”
“Probably not. I need the fear—it motivates me to do my best work. The songs would be a step less true if I wasn’t driven to get every bit of the music and the words right. Not perfect—I don’t have the skills for that—but right.”
“I think I understand.”
“Tomorrow night I’ll change after I sing, come join David for the dessert course. I like to have him be part of the audience at events like this. Seeing him there is a huge boost, and he can give me the straight scoop on sound, lighting, balance with the band—those kinds of things.”
Maggie found the pair of shoes that perfectly matched the yellow dress, slid them on the shelf above it, said over her shoulder, “Your Rob Turney sounds like a good guy.”
“You’ll meet him tomorrow night at the charity dinner. And his parents.”
“Ahh. A wealthy family? Or a political one?”
She must know the ticket prices. “The parents have ‘politically connected’ wealth. Rob is more on the earned-wealth side of things, a dealmaker who likes working in the financial world.”
“You really like him, Evie. I can hear it in your voice.”
“I do. My travel schedule is a problem for us. I work for the State Police when I’m not doing this task-force job. It makes it hard to build a life in Chicago when I’m rarely here.”
“Being a cop is how you think of yourself?”
“It is. I enjoy solving real-life puzzles.”
“You could become a private investigator, do that work for yourself.”
Evie paused as she unboxed a red dress. “I’ve never even considered that for myself. That’s a pretty big oversight. Especially considering David’s been living inside a PI’s world and giving me an up-close look at it.”
“If you can handle not having the authority a badge brings, I imagine it’s got some interesting benefits for what you do—when, how.”
“It’s something to think about,” Evie agreed. “I’m so sorry for how it’s been with you and David. You’ve been very gracious with him, given the limbo his decision about faith has created.”
“I’ve decided he’s my guy, for better or worse,” Maggie replied, placing more shoes on the shelf. “I’ve stepped away from him twice, thinking it was better to accept reality and move on, only to find myself coming back. Walking away sounds like a solution until you try it and find your heart stayed behind. I loved David before he found his new faith, and that love had time to sink deep roots. The car accident and his decision following it took us on an unexpected turn, but it didn’t damage the love we feel for each other.”