Sarah must have been looking at Erin like she’d lost it, because Erin turned back to her and explained, “It’s easier to argue with him when he’s not here. He’s so pissed with us for telling you everything this afternoon. A few minutes ago, he tried to punch Owen and knocked over a crash cart and passed out again.”
Sarah winced. “I heard.” She stood up. “Call off your dogs and let me see him.”
Erin shook her head and pulled Sarah back down to sit. “Look, Sarah, he breathed a lot of Martin’s cigarette smoke, and then he got upset about you, and then he tried to kill Owen. He’s getting meds, but his lungs are very twitchy. We need to keep him calm. We can’t give him a tranquilizer because those drugs suppress the respiration. We just want you to stay out of there right now. It would be better if y’all worked this out after the concert, so he doesn’t have a relapse. He’s doing a lot better.”
“You mean he’s allergic to me?”
“No, it’s just—”
Another realization hit Sarah. “You mean you’re going to go on?”
“Hell,” Erin said, looking at her watch, “it’s only four. The show doesn’t start until seven. We had him on in three hours after he had an attack in St. Louis. We’re professionals.”
They eyed each other uneasily as a shout from Martin and another crash echoed up the hallway.
“I need you to do me a favor,” Erin said. “And if you do this for me, you and I can call it even.”
Sarah’s heart leaped, because she wanted Erin to be her friend. Skeptical Natsuko calculated who had actually committed more offense against whom.
“Q wrote you a note as he was passing out at the house,” Erin said, “and he gave it to me for safekeeping. He thinks I’m out here giving it to you now. Truth is, I lost it somewhere on the kitchen floor in the confusion.” A note of pleading entered her high voice. “I need to you to go back and find it for me. Q is so mad at me already.”
“You’re just trying to get rid of me,” Sarah said.
“That, too.” Erin nodded. “But you do want to read this note. And I thought I saw something else on the kitchen floor that might interest you.”
“Okay,” Sarah relented.
“Thank you so much,” Erin gushed. They embraced each other warmly, all awkwardness gone.
Sarah allowed herself a deep sigh with her arms around her friend. After a few moments, she sat back. “Did he really act with Karen like he acts with me?”
Erin stared at Sarah for a second, then remembered what she’d said that day at her guesthouse. “No.” She smiled. “I’ve never seen him act this way. Definitely not with me. That’s why Martin and Owen and I tried to collar him. Guess what? You can’t collar Q.”
They grinned at each other as they stood. But Erin’s smile faded as Sarah headed for the reception desk rather than the exit. The receptionists stood at the ready.
“Where are you going?” Erin wailed.
“I’m not leaving until I see him,” Sarah said.
Erin ran to insert herself between Sarah and the emergency room. “Girlfriend,” she said pointedly, “this is still my band. This is my Nationally Televised Whatever Whatever. At least for five more hours, until nine o’clock, when the show’s over and the fireworks start, this is my band, and Q is mine.” Her expression softened. “And then you can have him.”
Sarah escaped the paparazzi without making a statement except to say that the Nationally Televised Holiday Concert Event would go on as planned. With a sigh of relief, she slipped into the BMW, exited the parking deck, and accelerated onto Eighth Avenue South, the usually bustling thoroughfare all but deserted for the holiday. After five minutes, she pulled into Quentin’s driveway.
The door into the kitchen was ajar, with air-conditioning seeping out and hot humidity flooding the dark room. The usually maid-clean marble floor was littered with the leavings from the paramedics, plastic bags marked STERILE and ripped open. There were also a few small white sheets of paper.
She picked up one sheet. On it was scrawled, Sarah has it.
Sarah went cold, even with warmth from outside swirling around her. Quentin must have written this, and he meant the inhaler. Surely this wasn’t what Erin had wanted Sarah to see. If she was trying to make Sarah feel guilty, she’d succeeded.
Frantically Sarah grabbed up the other notes. 911, one said, and the next, Help, dumbass, which didn’t make her feel any better.
Her high-heeled sandal kicked something solid under the plastic bags. She stooped to find a jewelry store ring box.
Poised to open it, she saw that her hands shook, and Natsuko slapped Sarah around. There was no telling whether it was meant for her.
Inside was a freaking enormous diamond flanked by hefty emeralds.
It was for her.
She slipped its cool weight onto her finger.
That’s when she saw the last note, which had drifted under the cabinets.
SARAH
I love you
Don’t leave
Sarah sat down on the floor with the note. She read the six words over and over, ran her fingertip over the messy handwriting, touched I love you.
“Found something?” Nine Lives asked behind her.
Tonight would be a first for the Cheatin’ Hearts since they became famous. They would tell the truth.
In the emergency room, they’d all agreed—the rest of them talking, Quentin writing on a pad—that they would mention Erin’s pregnancy in the act.
Then Owen had suggested they nix the cowboy hats. Everyone heartily seconded this idea. Erin had always complained that the hats messed up her hair, and Quentin found them bothersome and sweaty at an outdoor concert.
Martin had told them that he would check himself into rehab as soon as the concert was over tonight. And when they’d arrived at Vulcan Park, he’d taken his long-sleeved shirt off in the heat, revealing the purplish track marks snaking up both arms. Quentin wondered whether he would keep the shirt off for the concert. He thought Martin might have gone off the deep end. But he hoped this was step one toward recovery: admitting to the world that he had a problem.
It was Martin’s turn to get drunk. He didn’t bring it up, and the rest of them were reluctant to push him, considering. Quentin didn’t volunteer because he planned to have a lot going on with Sarah after the concert. He figured Owen felt the same way about Erin. This would be their first completely sober concert in two years.