PART ONE

1. ELLA BRODEN

ELLA BRODEN

After the introductory applause dies down, and before the piano plays a note, I shut my eyes. It’s a ritual I’ve adopted—to revel for a moment in the dark quiet where nothing exists except this feeling inside me.

Even though more than a hundred people are staring at me, I’m alone. Then I let a single person into my consciousness.

Charlotte.

In my mind’s eye, my sister sits in the first row. She has on display that smile I remember so vividly from when we were little. The same one she flashed toothlessly when I held her as a baby—and every day afterward until the last time I saw it, six months ago.

I imagine mouthing “Thank you,” and she nods with understanding. She knows I’m grateful for her still being here, even after her life has ended. For giving me the courage to do this. For being proud of me.

Then I open my eyes.

“Thank you. Thank you all so much. My name is Cassidy. I appreciate you all coming out tonight.”

That’s the drummer’s cue to call it out. “One, two, three!” And it’s showtime.

The first time I took the stage as the opening act for Rescue Dogs, the clapping lasted ten seconds, tops. Polite, but certainly not enthusiastic. Karen, the Lava Lounge’s stage manager, had warned me that this would happen.

“You’re in the big time now, honey,” she said. “On Tuesday nights, people pay to get in, so it’s a different crowd than on open-mic night. Everyone comes to see the headliner, but you’ll win them over, I promise.”

The lack of enthusiasm was more than offset by the thrill of someone actually paying me to sing. Granted, I go on only one night a week, for which I receive a hundred bucks—a far cry from what I’d earned as a lawyer working in my father’s law firm. Even my salary back when I was an Assistant District Attorney, which I’d always viewed as slave wages, was a princely sum compared with the pay scale for artists in New York City. But on the stage I feel truly alive, and that can’t be converted to dollars and cents.