Page 30 of A Song for Another Woman

I didn’t make it to the guest room. I made it to the couch, sat down with my duffel at my feet and the blue folder clutched to my chest, and said, “I left him.”

June only nodded once. Then she took the folder from my arms, put it on her kitchen table like it was evidence in a trial, and said, “Okay. Shoes off. Water first. Breakdown after.”

My sister runs a diner that stays open all night. She's used to dealing with problems surgically, whether they're drunks coming in for coffee or old men who pinch waitresses' behinds.

She sits on the edge of the coffee table and looks at me over the rim of her own mug. “I have to go in for lunch rush.”

I open my mouth, but she stops me before I can speak.

“I also know you’re about to tell me you’re fine here, and then I’m going to find you eight hours from now fused to this couch with cable news talking about your marriage in the background.”

I glance toward the black screen. June lifts her eyebrows.

“I don’t want to go outside,” I admit.

Something in her face softens, but not into pity. June has never offered pity like it was a gift. “Good thing you don't have to."

“It’s everywhere.”

"Yeah. It is."

“They’re calling me the missing wife.”

Her jaw tightens.

I look down at the coffee gone cold between my hands. “Like I wandered away from somebody’s yard.”

June sets her mug down hard enough for the spoon to rattle. “You are not missing. You are sitting on my couch in Harmony Ridge, Tennessee, wearing one of my sweatshirts and looking like hell. As far as second locations go, it's a good one.”

A laugh scratches out of me. It sounds unused.

The laugh dies, but something warm and painful remains behind it. She stands and reaches for my hand. “Wallow for a day or two. Then come to the diner.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“June.”

“You can sit in the office. You can chop pie boxes. You can stare at the wall and terrify my prep cook. I don’t care. But it would be better than hiding in my house while the whole country talks about you like you’re not a person.”

“I don’t want people looking at me.”

“They’re going to look,” she says. “Then they’re going to remember you’re Emmy Sutton and feel ashamed of themselves.”

I stare at her. She squeezes my hand. “Let them do the work.”

The gas station sits at the corner of Route 8 and Dogwood, exactly where it's always been. The prices are higher, there's a new ice machine I don't remember, and the pumps have a TV that show cute pets and clips from late-night television. Junepumps the gas while I run in for aspirin. The headache that rode shotgun with me from Nashville has since matured into a tenant.

After the first couple of days of wallowing, I managed to avoid looking at my life imploding online and on television. That all comes to a screeching halt as I stand paying for my aspirin.

Because there I am on the magazine rack beside chewing gum and sunflower seeds. It's not a flattering picture. They never are when they're selling this brand of drama. It's a still from the CMAS, my smile almost brittle under the arena lights.

COUNTRY KING & WILDFIRE GIRL: WHERE’S THE WIFE?

Below it, smaller:

INSIDE CADE TYLER’S MARRIAGE CRISIS.