about noise. And you can go in and out, no problem.”
“I’ve never heard you work—just enjoyed the results. Expect me to stick.”
“Then get comfortable.” She handed him headphones, plugged them in. “I’m already set up from earlier. I’m going to voice a chapter. If there are any hiccups, I’ll retake. If you need something, just signal.”
He angled the chair toward the booth, sat. “I’m fine. Entertain me.”
She’d do her best.
She closed herself in the booth, adjusted the mic, brought up her computer monitor, and below that the text on her tablet.
Room-temperature water to hydrate the throat, the tongue, the lips. Tongue twisters to loosen up.
“Susie works in a shoeshine shop. Where she shines she sits. Where she sits she shines. Eleven benevolent elephants.”
Over and over, mixed with others until she felt smooth.
She took a moment, two, to put herself back into the characters, the story, the tones, the pace.
Standing close to the mic, she hit record.
Now she played multiple roles. Not just the characters she voiced, each one demanding a distinct vocal style, not just the role of narrator outside the dialogue. But she stood as engineer, as director, keeping herself in the story she read while scanning ahead to prepare for narration, dialogue coming next, while watching the monitor to be sure she didn’t lose pitch or pop or slur.
Dissatisfied, she paused, backtracked, began the paragraph of description again.
Outside the booth, Hugh listened to her voice—voices—in his head. A born performer, he thought. Just look at her facial expressions, her body language as she became each character or shifted back to that smooth, clear narration.
Part of him might hope—an admittedly selfish hope—she’d step in front of the camera again. But his girl had found her place.
Talent would out, he thought, and sipped his Coke, let his girl tell him a story.
He lost track of time, found himself surprised when she shut down. He tipped one earpiece back as she came out of the booth.
“You don’t need to stop for me. I’m enjoying it.”
“For this kind of work, I need to take breaks. I’ll start muffing it otherwise. What did you think?”
“What I heard of it’s a damn good story. I’d say I want to read it, but I think I’d like to listen to the full audio. You’ve got a way, Cate.” He set the headphones aside. “Did you use your cousin Ethan for Chuck, the obnoxious, noisy neighbor?”
“Caught.” She pulled the tie out of her hair. “Ethan’s got that—I think of it as a kind of pinch in his voice.”
“It works.”
“So, how about I make us some sandwiches? Consuela snuck some of her ham from last night’s farewell dinner into my fridge, and I baked some brown bread this morning.”
Since she’d been awake before dawn.
“Sold. I don’t suppose I could get another Coke?”
He knew just how to put that charming innocence on. But Cate was no fool.
“No. I’m not willing to risk Lily’s wrath. If she says she has spies, she has spies.”
She put together a walking picnic of thick sandwiches, the baked sweet potato chips Lily—barely—approved of for Hugh’s diet, a couple of Cuties, and water bottles.
She really wanted a Coke herself, but it didn’t seem fair.
As they walked down the path, then the steps toward the beach, she relaxed. The man who walked with her still moved like a dancer. Slower maybe, she thought, but still with that same easy grace.
When they reached the beach, she aimed for the old stone bench so they could sit and eat and enjoy.
No bite to the wind today to stir up white horses on the water, but air that felt more of May than of February.
“I have this memory of sitting here with Grandda. It would’ve been summer, and he gave me a bag of M&M’s. My mother wouldn’t allow candy, so he’d sneak it to me when he could. It was the best candy in the world, sitting here that bright, bright day eating M&M’s with him. We had sunglasses on—I still remember mine. I was in a pink-is-everything stage, so they were pink, heart-shaped, with little sparkles in the frame.”
She smiled as she bit into her sandwich. “He said we were just a couple of movie stars.”
“It’s a good memory.”
“It really is. Now I’ll have this one, with you, on a cloudless, miraculous day in February.”
The towering trees of the kelp forest waved, green and gold, in the shallows, and the strip of sand sparkled—like her long-ago sunglasses—with mica.
On a huddle of rocks at the far curve