They booed the waitress offstage until one unplugged microphone exposed the diva’s greatest lie
Nia stared at the frozen image.
Thirty-one years earlier, no one had asked her permission before putting her voice on a record.
Tonight, somebody finally did.
She handed the phone back.
“Post the truth.”
At 1:17 a.m., Danny uploaded the video.
At 3:42 a.m., it had 600,000 views.
By breakfast, it had passed four million.
And by noon, America had one question.
Who was Nia Brooks?
Celeste Vale already knew the answer.
She had known since 1995.
Part 2
Nia’s mother watched the viral video three times without speaking.
Evelyn Brooks was seventy-three, sharp-eyed, silver-haired and stubborn enough to refuse help carrying groceries even after knee surgery.
She sat at her kitchen table in East Nashville while Nia stood by the sink.
On the fourth viewing, Evelyn paused the video when Nia reached the high note.
“You still bend the vowel the same way.”
Nia folded her arms.
“Mama.”
“What?”
“I got fired.”
“I heard you.”
“Four million people watched me get fired.”
“Eight million now.”
Nia stared at her.
Evelyn held up her phone.
“Your cousin Patrice sent it.”
Despite herself, Nia laughed.
Then the laugh broke.
Her eyes filled.
“I thought I was done with this.”
Evelyn’s expression softened.
“No, baby.”
She reached across the table.
“You thought they were done with you.”
Nia sat down.
For thirty-one years, Evelyn had been the only person who knew every piece of the story.
In the summer of 1995, Nia had been nineteen and singing wherever anyone would let her.
Church basements.
Coffeehouses.
Wedding receptions.
Background vocals for twenty dollars and a meal.
Evelyn cleaned offices at night, including a small studio on Music Row owned by producer Malcolm Dyer.
One evening, a scheduled session singer never arrived.
Walter Briggs, the engineer, heard Nia singing while waiting for her mother.
He asked her to record a guide vocal.
One take became two.
Two became three.
The third take silenced the room.
The song was called Where the Streetlights End.
Celeste Vale, then a twenty-one-year-old model with a modest regional singing career, was supposed to record the final vocal later.
But the label had a problem.
Celeste could not reproduce what Nia had done.
Not the runs.
Not the low register.
And certainly not the climactic note.
So they made a decision.
They kept Nia’s vocal.
Celeste became the face.
Nia received a session check and signed paperwork she barely understood.
Nobody told her the recording would become the commercial master.
Nobody offered royalties.
Nobody put her name on the album.
When Evelyn confronted Malcolm Dyer, he threatened to blacklist Nia before her career began.
“We can make her a singer,” he had said, “or we can make her the girl who causes trouble.”
Evelyn had been a single mother earning nine dollars an hour.
They had no lawyer.
No money.
No connections.
And Nia had a little brother who needed heart surgery.
So Evelyn told her daughter to take the money.
Nia had hated her for it.
Then she had understood.
Then she had hated herself for understanding.
The phone rang.
Nia looked at the number.
Unknown.
She declined it.
Immediately, it rang again.
Evelyn raised an eyebrow.
“Answer.”
Nia did.
“Hello?”
A man’s voice replied.
“Is this Nia Brooks?”
“Who’s asking?”
“My name is Aaron Pike. I was Celeste Vale’s tour audio director.”
“Was?”
A pause.
“As of an hour ago.”
Nia sat straighter.
“What do you want?”
“To apologize.”
“For what?”
“Knowing enough to know something was wrong and never asking the right question.”
Nia said nothing.
Aaron continued.
“I’ve worked for Celeste for twelve years. Every performance of Where the Streetlights End used a lead playback stem.”
Nia’s grip tightened.
“She never sang it?”
“Not fully.”
“Twelve years?”
“Yes.”
Nia closed her eyes.
Aaron’s voice cracked.
“I told myself it was normal touring practice. Lots of artists use support tracks. But hers wasn’t support.”
“It was me.”
“Yes.”
Nia opened her eyes.
Her mother was watching.
“What changed?”
“You.”
Nia almost laughed.
“One waitress singing in a restaurant changed your conscience?”
“No.”
Aaron paused.
“One waitress getting humiliated for telling the truth did.”
Before Nia could answer, someone knocked.
Evelyn walked to the window.
A dark sedan sat outside.
“Who is it?” Nia asked.
Evelyn peered through the curtain.
“Old white man carrying something that looks like it belongs in a museum.”
Nia’s breath stopped.
She knew before Evelyn opened the door.
Walter Briggs stood on the porch.
He was eighty-two now.
Thinner.
Bent slightly at the shoulders.
But his eyes were the same.
Under one arm he carried a battered gray tape box.
“Nia.”
She could not speak.
Walter stepped inside.
Evelyn covered her mouth.
“You kept it.”
He placed the box on the kitchen table.
“I said I would.”
Nia stared at the handwriting on the faded label.
WHERE THE STREETLIGHTS END
TAKE 3
LEAD VOCAL – NIA BROOKS
Her knees weakened.
Walter pulled out a chair.
“Sit down.”
Nia did.
He opened the box carefully.
Inside was the original two-inch session reel.
“The label destroyed most of the alternate masters when they digitized the archive,” Walter said. “I kept this because Malcolm told me to erase your name from the session log.”
Evelyn whispered, “And you didn’t.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Why?”
Walter looked at Nia.
“Because I had ears.”
Nia laughed through her tears.
Walter pointed toward the tape.
“The first thing on that reel is my voice.”
“What did you say?”
He smiled.
“Take three. Lead vocal, Nia Brooks.”
Silence filled the kitchen.
Then Nia began crying.
Not elegantly.
Not quietly.
Thirty-one years came out of her in one broken breath.
Evelyn wrapped both arms around her daughter.
Walter looked away.
The doorbell rang again.
This time it was a courier.
Celeste Vale’s lawyers had sent a letter.
Nia opened it.
They offered $250,000 in exchange for a confidentiality agreement, a public statement describing the Bellweather performance as a “misunderstanding,” and a promise never to claim ownership of the original recording.
Evelyn read the number twice.
“That is a lot of money.”
“Yes.”
“You taking it?”
Nia looked at the tape.
“No.”
Evelyn smiled.
“Good.”
By afternoon, the story had become national news.
A second Bellweather video surfaced, proving the microphone had been disconnected.
Audio experts compared Nia’s restaurant performance with Celeste’s 1995 recording and noted extraordinary similarities in phrasing and vocal texture.
Celeste’s team released a statement calling the accusations “a malicious attempt to exploit a beloved song.”
That statement made everything worse.
Sponsors began asking questions.
Two postponed campaigns.
Ticket resale prices for Celeste’s comeback tour collapsed.
Then Celeste announced a press conference.
Grant Mercer called Nia personally.
“She wants you there.”
Nia laughed.
“I bet she does.”
“She wants to make an offer.”
“She already did.”
“This is different.”
“What is it?”
“A job.”
Nia became quiet.
Grant continued.
“Backup vocalist. Full tour salary. Benefits. Premium travel. Six figures.”
“Where would I stand?”
“What?”
“Onstage.”
A long pause.
Grant exhaled.
“Nia.”
“Where would I stand?”
“Behind the main set. The background singers are partially concealed by the lighting design.”
Nia smiled without humor.
“Behind the curtain.”
“This could change your life.”
“My voice already changed hers.”
“Nia, listen to me. Celeste is giving you a way out.”
“No.”
“She can make this ugly.”
Nia looked at Walter’s tape on the table.
“She already did.”
The press conference took place the next morning at the Cumberland Grand Hotel.
Reporters packed the ballroom.
Celeste entered wearing cream-colored silk and the expression of a woman attending someone else’s funeral.
She spoke first.
“I have always supported young artists and working musicians.”
Nia, standing offstage, almost laughed.
Celeste continued.
“What happened at the Bellweather was unfortunate. I believe Ms. Brooks is talented, and I would never want one emotional evening to damage her future.”
Then she smiled toward the wings.
“Nia, please join me.”
Nia walked out.
Camera shutters exploded.
For the first time in her life, the world wanted her name.
Celeste extended a hand.
Nia did not take it.
The smile tightened.
“I understand you’ve had a difficult few days.”
Nia looked around the room.
“I lost my job.”
“Yes. And I would like to fix that.”
Celeste announced the tour offer.
Reporters murmured.
“Not as a waitress,” Celeste added generously. “As a professional backup singer.”
Nia picked up the contract placed on the podium.
She flipped through it.
Then she found the clause.
“There it is.”
Celeste blinked.
“Excuse me?”
Nia read aloud.
“Employee agrees that she has no ownership, authorship, performance or royalty claim regarding Where the Streetlights End.”
The room changed instantly.
Grant closed his eyes.
Celeste’s publicist went white.
Nia looked up.
“This isn’t a job.”
She placed the contract down.
“It’s another way to make me disappear.”
Celeste’s voice hardened.
“You were paid in 1995.”
“Two hundred and fifty dollars.”
“You signed a release.”
“I was nineteen.”
“You signed it.”
“And nobody told me my guide vocal was becoming the record.”
Celeste stepped closer.
“Every artist starts somewhere.”
Nia stared at her.
“Did you start with somebody else’s voice?”
A reporter gasped.
Celeste’s composure cracked.
“You should be grateful anyone knows your name.”
The ballroom went silent.
Nia felt every camera turn.
Celeste realized what she had said.
Too late.
Nia slowly removed the Bellweather name tag she had kept in her pocket.
She placed it beside the contract.
“For thirty-one years, I served people who never knew I could sing.”
She looked at Celeste.
“There is nothing shameful about carrying plates.”
Then she looked toward the cameras.
“But I am finished carrying somebody else’s lie.”
Celeste’s face burned.
“You think one viral video makes you a star?”
“No.”
“Then what exactly do you want?”
Nia thought of her mother cleaning studio hallways.
Walter refusing to erase a name.
Thousands of session singers whose voices had filled records while their names disappeared into paperwork.
“I want the truth printed where everyone can see it.”
Celeste laughed bitterly.
“Truth doesn’t sell tickets.”
Nia stepped away from the podium.
“Then sing it live.”
Celeste stopped.
Nia turned back.
“Your tour opens Saturday.”
Reporters leaned forward.
“Sing Where the Streetlights End completely live. No lead track. No hidden vocal. No audience singing the high note for you.”
Celeste stared at her.
Nia’s voice stayed calm.
“I’ll be in the front row.”
The challenge was online before Nia left the ballroom.
By sunset, it had become the biggest entertainment story in the country.
And at 9:40 that night, Celeste Vale posted six words.
Saturday night.
I will sing it live.
Part 3
Twenty thousand people filled Riverstone Arena on Saturday night.
Nia had never attended a concert that large.
She had certainly never attended one where strangers recognized her before she reached her seat.
“That’s her.”
“The waitress.”
“Nia!”
Phones lifted.
Someone shouted, “Sing it yourself!”
Nia ignored them.
Evelyn held her arm.
“You nervous?”
“I’m not singing.”
Her mother gave her a look.
“Then why are your hands shaking?”
Nia looked toward the enormous stage.
“Because thirty-one years ago, this was supposed to be impossible.”
Their seats were front row center.
Two tickets waited at will call under Nia’s name.
Sent personally by Celeste.
A message had been included.
Enjoy the show.
Evelyn had laughed for almost a minute.
Backstage, Celeste Vale was not laughing.
Grant Mercer stood in her dressing room holding a tablet.
“The sponsor agreement requires live vocal verification.”
Celeste spun around.
“What?”
“You knew this.”
“I knew they wanted reduced playback.”
“No. After your post, they demanded no lead vocal track on Streetlights.”
“Tell them no.”
“They’ll pull the broadcast.”
“Then let them.”
“And three more sponsors walk tomorrow.”
Celeste stared into the mirror.
For three decades, people had called her fearless.
She had played stadiums.
Walked red carpets.
Survived divorces, scandals, failed albums and public humiliation.
But she had built her career around one fear.
That someday somebody would ask her to sing the note.
The real note.
The one Nia Brooks had sung at nineteen as if pain had been invented inside her chest.
Celeste had tried.
God knew she had tried.
Voice coaches.
Key changes.
Secret studio sessions.
Steroids.
Vocal therapy.
Nothing worked.
Her instrument simply did not possess that sound.
At first she had told herself it did not matter.
The record company had chosen the master.
Not her.
She was young.
She had no power.
Then the song became a hit.
Then a phenomenon.
Then an identity.
And each year that passed made the truth more expensive.
By the time Celeste had enough power to confess, confession would have destroyed everything.
So she chose silence.
Then profit.
Then arrogance.
Eventually she forgot there had ever been a difference.
“Where’s Aaron?” she demanded.
“Gone.”
“Who is running playback?”
“Interim engineer.”
“Tell him to restore the track.”
“He won’t.”
“Why?”
Grant looked exhausted.
“Because I told him not to.”
Celeste slowly turned.
“You?”
“Yes.”
“After everything I gave you?”
Grant’s jaw tightened.
“You gave me a career.”
“And?”
“My father gave me a spine.”
She slapped him.
Neither spoke.
Grant touched his cheek.
Then he placed his tour credentials on the table.
“After tonight, I’m done.”
Celeste’s eyes filled.
“You don’t get to abandon me now.”
“I should have abandoned the lie fifteen years ago.”
The opening act ended.
The arena went dark.
Twenty thousand people screamed.
Nia felt the sound inside her ribs.
For ninety minutes, Celeste gave the performance of her life.
She sang.
Truly sang.
Not perfectly, but honestly.
Without the pressure of the old hit, she was better than Nia expected.
Evelyn leaned toward her.
“She has a voice.”
“I know.”
“Not yours.”
“No.”
“But she has one.”
Nia nodded.
That was part of the tragedy.
Celeste had never needed to steal one.
Finally, the stage went black.
A single spotlight appeared.
A piano rose from beneath the floor.
The first chords of Where the Streetlights End echoed through Riverstone Arena.
The crowd exploded.
Nia stopped breathing.
Celeste walked slowly toward the microphone.
For once, there were no dancers.
No fireworks.
No giant screens showing glamorous close-ups.
Just a woman and a song.
She began.
The first verse was shaky.
But real.
Evelyn squeezed Nia’s hand.
The second verse grew stronger.
People sang quietly around them.
Then came the bridge.
Celeste glanced toward the sound booth.
Nothing happened.
No rescue track.
Her eyes found Grant standing in the wings.
He shook his head.
Celeste kept going.
She reached the line before the signature note.
Twenty thousand people seemed to inhale at once.
Celeste opened her mouth.
The note cracked.
She stopped.
The band faltered.
The crowd waited.
Celeste tried again.
Nothing.
For years, this was where she had extended the microphone toward the audience.
Tonight she could not.
Everyone knew why.
Celeste lowered her head.
A few people booed.
Then more.
Nia felt Evelyn tense.
The sound grew.
The same ugly sound from the Bellweather.
Booing.
Celeste stood alone beneath the spotlight.
Nia remembered what it had felt like.
Humiliation did not become justice simply because the person receiving it had once humiliated you.
Nia stood.
Evelyn looked up.
“What are you doing?”
Nia stepped toward the barricade.
A security guard recognized her and hesitated.
Celeste looked down.
Their eyes met.
Someone shouted, “Let Nia sing!”
The chant began almost immediately.
“Nia! Nia! Nia!”
Celeste’s face twisted.
For one terrible second, Nia saw what she could do.
She could walk onto that stage and take everything.
The moment.
The song.
The applause.
The career.
Revenge had never been offered to her so beautifully.
Then an elderly man appeared beside the sound booth.
Walter Briggs.
On the arena screens, a camera found him carrying the old gray tape box.
The crowd quieted.
Grant walked onto the stage.
Celeste turned.
“What is this?”
Grant took another microphone.
“The truth.”
Celeste whispered, “Don’t.”
He looked toward Nia.
“Ms. Brooks, may we play it?”
Every face turned toward her.
Nia nodded.
Walter placed the reel onto a restored tape machine.
The arena speakers hissed.
Then a young Walter Briggs’s voice traveled across thirty-one years.
“Where the Streetlights End. Take three. Lead vocal, Nia Brooks.”
A click.
A breath.
Then nineteen-year-old Nia began to sing.
Evelyn covered her face.
Nia could not move.
The voice was younger, brighter and terrified of nothing.
It filled every corner of the arena.
People listened in stunned silence.
The recording stopped after forty seconds.
Grant spoke.
“This is the original master session reel recorded in 1995. The lead vocal released on Celeste Vale’s record belonged to Nia Brooks.”
Celeste backed away.
A camera caught her face.
She looked smaller than Nia had ever seen her.
“This proves nothing,” she whispered.
Walter’s voice came through the arena.
“Then perhaps the session paperwork will.”
Screens displayed scanned recording logs.
NIA BROOKS – LEAD VOCAL – TAKE 3.
Grant continued.
“For fifteen years, I knew Celeste did not sing this song live. I told myself the original recording was none of my business.”
He looked at Nia.
“I was wrong.”
The audience began murmuring.
Celeste grabbed Grant’s microphone.
“You want the truth?”
Her voice echoed.
Everyone froze.
She looked at Nia.
“You want all of it?”
Nia said nothing.
Celeste laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“I knew.”
A wave of noise rolled through the arena.
Celeste continued.
“I knew the vocal wasn’t mine.”
Grant stared.
“I was twenty-one. They told me it was temporary. They told me we’d rerecord it after radio testing.”
She swallowed.
“Then the song broke nationally in six weeks.”
She looked toward the giant screens showing her own face.
“And I was a coward.”
Nobody moved.
“I told myself the company made the decision. Then I told myself Nia had been paid. Then I told myself nobody cared who sang what.”
Her eyes found Nia.
“And after enough years, I started telling myself it really was mine.”
Tears streaked through her makeup.
“It wasn’t.”
The boos began again.
Celeste flinched.
Nia suddenly grabbed a nearby security microphone.
“Stop.”
Her voice boomed through the arena.
People quieted.
Nia looked around at twenty thousand faces.
“Don’t boo her for telling the truth.”
Celeste stared at her.
Nia continued.
“I know what it feels like to stand under lights while a room decides you’re not human anymore.”
Silence.
“She owes me an apology. She owes me more than an apology.”
Nia walked toward the stage steps.
Security let her pass.
“But humiliation isn’t payment.”
She stepped onto the stage.
Celeste backed away.
Nia approached the microphone.
For thirty-one years, she had imagined confronting this woman.
In every fantasy, she had something devastating to say.
Now she saw only another aging woman who had spent most of her life guarding a lie.
Nia looked at her.
“Why didn’t you tell them?”
Celeste cried harder.
“Because every year I waited, I had more to lose.”
Nia nodded.
“So did I.”
Celeste covered her mouth.
“I am sorry.”
Nia waited.
Celeste lowered her hand.
“No.”
She shook her head.
“That isn’t enough.”
She turned toward the crowd.
“Nia Brooks sang Where the Streetlights End.”
The words rolled across the arena.
“She sang the recording that made me famous.”
Celeste looked back at Nia.
“And I let the world forget her name.”
Nia felt her mother’s hand from decades ago.
Walter’s handwriting.
The restaurant apron.
The booing.
The two hundred and fifty dollar check.
Everything seemed to loosen inside her.
Grant handed Nia the microphone.
“This song is yours.”
Nia looked down at it.
Then at Celeste.
“Sing with me.”
Celeste blinked.
“What?”
“Not my part.”
Nia smiled faintly.
“Yours.”
“I don’t have one.”
“Then find one.”
The audience began cheering.
Celeste shook her head.
“I can’t.”
“You can sing.”
“Not like you.”
“You were never supposed to.”
That sentence broke something open.
Celeste closed her eyes.
Nia turned toward the pianist.
“From the second verse.”
The music began.
Nia sang.
This time there was no restaurant chatter.
No mocking laughter.
No disconnected microphone.
Her voice traveled through an arena built for stars.
At the chorus, Celeste joined softly beneath her.
Not pretending to lead.
Not pretending to own the sound.
Just singing harmony.
Her own harmony.
When the signature note approached, Celeste stepped back.
Nia looked toward Evelyn.
Her mother was standing beside the stage crying.
Nia sang the note.
The arena erupted before she finished it.
Twenty thousand people rose.
Nia heard her name.
Not Celeste’s.
Not the song’s.
Hers.
Nia Brooks.
For the first time in thirty-one years, the voice and the woman were standing in the same place.
Six months later, the settlement was announced.
The record company acknowledged Nia as the original lead vocalist on Where the Streetlights End.
Every digital copy was corrected.
Every future physical release carried her photograph and name.
Nia received back royalties under a confidential agreement substantial enough that Evelyn immediately asked whether they were finally allowed to replace her twenty-year-old refrigerator.
Nia bought her a house instead.
Walter Briggs received a lifetime engineering award from a national recording association.
Grant Mercer created a foundation providing legal representation to young session musicians before they signed recording contracts.
Aaron Pike returned to touring, but only after publicly testifying about the playback system he had operated.
The Bellweather Room offered Nia her job back.
She declined.
Then she bought dinner there for the entire kitchen staff.
Danny Reyes, the busboy whose video started everything, received a scholarship to study documentary filmmaking.
Celeste’s tour was canceled.
For nearly four months, she disappeared.
The tabloids called it her downfall.
Nia refused every interview asking whether she was happy Celeste had been “destroyed.”
“She isn’t destroyed,” Nia told one reporter. “She got caught.”
Those were not the same thing.
In March, a letter arrived.
Handwritten.
No publicist.
No lawyer.
Nia opened it at Evelyn’s kitchen table.
Celeste wrote that she had started vocal lessons again.
Not because she intended to return to stadiums.
Because for the first time since she was twenty-one, she wanted to discover what her own voice sounded like when she wasn’t trying to imitate someone else’s.
At the bottom, she had written one question.
If you ever perform the song again, may I buy a ticket?
Nia smiled.
Evelyn peered over her shoulder.
“What are you going to say?”
Nia folded the letter.
“She can buy her own ticket.”
Evelyn laughed so hard she nearly spilled her coffee.
Three weeks later, posters appeared across Nashville.
NIA BROOKS
ONE NIGHT
HER VOICE
Twenty thousand seats sold out in fifty-eight minutes.
On the night of the concert, Nia stood backstage wearing a midnight-blue dress.
No apron.
No tray.
No borrowed identity.
Walter sat in the sound booth.
Grant waited near the wings.
Danny filmed from the front row.
Evelyn stood beside her daughter holding the old gray tape box.
“You nervous?” Evelyn asked.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“How is that good?”
“Means you know it matters.”
A stage manager raised five fingers.
Five seconds.
Nia looked toward the curtain.
“Mama?”
“Yes?”
“Do you ever wish we’d fought harder back then?”
Evelyn considered it.
“Every day.”
Nia looked at her.
Evelyn touched her daughter’s cheek.
“But I also know what it cost us just to survive.”
The crowd began chanting Nia’s name.
Evelyn smiled.
“Survival got us here.”
The curtain rose.
Nia walked onto the stage.
The cheering was so loud she stopped.
Twenty thousand people stood.
She looked toward the front row.
One seat near the aisle held a familiar blond woman wearing no sunglasses, no security entourage and no expensive fur.
Celeste Vale.
She was standing too.
Applauding.
Nia nodded once.
Celeste nodded back.
The lights dimmed.
Nia carried the gray tape box to the microphone.
“A long time ago,” she said, “a studio engineer wrote my name on this box when powerful people wanted it erased.”
The arena became completely silent.
“For thirty-one years, this tape remembered me when the industry didn’t.”
She looked toward Walter.
He wiped his eyes.
Nia continued.
“But tonight isn’t about proving who I was.”
She placed the box beside the piano.
“Tonight is about deciding who I get to be now.”
Applause rolled through the room.
The pianist waited.
Nia looked toward her mother.
Evelyn mouthed the same words she had said when Nia was a child singing in church.
Go on, baby.
Nia smiled.
The opening chords began.
Where the Streetlights End.
This time, before singing the first line, Nia looked out at the crowd.
“No hidden track.”
People cheered.
“No borrowed face.”
Louder.
“And nobody behind a curtain.”
The audience exploded.
Nia laughed.
Then she sang.
Her voice had changed since nineteen.
Of course it had.
It carried years now.
Restaurant shifts.
Hospital bills.
Funerals.
Rent notices.
Birthdays.
Regret.
Forgiveness.
A mother who had done the best she could.
A young girl who had once believed one recording session might change her life.
She had been right.
She had only misunderstood how long change could take.
When the final note faded, the arena remained silent for half a heartbeat.
Then twenty thousand people roared.
Nia stood under the lights with tears running down her face.
Evelyn came onto the stage.
The crowd cheered even louder.
Nia embraced her.
Evelyn whispered into her daughter’s ear.
“Thirty-one years late.”
Nia pulled back.
She looked at the audience.
At Walter.
At Celeste.
At the old tape box bearing the name someone had refused to erase.
Then she smiled.
“No, Mama.”
She lifted the microphone.
“Right on time.”
THE END
