He didn’t hand it over. He held it with both hands, looking at it rather than at her. “I’ve rewritten this several times,” he said. “I drove here this morning, having rewritten it again last night. I’ve been carrying some version of it for—” he paused, “—a long time.” Her name was written on the front in careful, formal handwriting.
Helen leaned forward. Her fingers were an inch from it when a sound from inside the venue stopped everything—sharp, urgent, cutting clean through the music and the murmur of forty people. Not a scream exactly. The sound a room makes when something has gone wrong.