Page 33 of A Song for Another Woman

And for the first time since I drove away from Nashville, I understand something cleanly. They didn’t kill it.

Chapter Eight

CADE

I wake up reaching for a woman who isn't there. My hand lands on cool sheet. Smooth cotton. Too expensive. Too clean. The kind Emmy once teased me about because apparently I'd become a man who slept on fabric with a thread count instead of a personality.

Her side of the bed is untouched.

For one stupid second, my body doesn't understand what my brain already knows. I turn my head toward the bathroom, listening for the shower. I wait for the soft opening of a drawer, the low hum she makes when she's half-awake and trying to remember where she put her earrings. I wait for coffee, or for the little creak in the floor near the closet she always stepped over like the house might appreciate the courtesy.

Nothing.

The bedroom is enormous around me. Gray walls. Cream rug. A bench at the foot of the bed no one has ever sat on because it looks like it belongs in a magazine and not under human weight. The drapes hang perfectly. The nightstands match. There isn't one damn thing in this room that would tell a stranger my wife ever lived here except the faint dent in the pillow beside mine. Even that will be gone soon.

I stare at it until my chest starts doing something I don't want to name.

“Emmy,” I say. My voice falls flat in the room.

I sit up hard, like motion might fix the emptiness. The house stays quiet. Not peaceful. Quiet the way a studio is quiet after the band leaves and all that's left is coiled cables, stale coffee, and the smell of work that used to feel important.

For the first time since “Wildfire” hit, I don't know what I'm supposed to do next. Worse, I don't want to do anything.

My phone is on the floor where I dropped it sometime before sunrise. I pick it up and call her before pride can get its boots on.

It rings once. Voicemail.

I hang up and call again. Once. Voicemail.

By the fifth time, even I have to stop pretending the signal is bad. Emmy Sutton Tyler doesn't miss calls by accident. Not from me. Not even angry. My wife has spent years making sure Cade Tyler never fell through a crack in his own life. She answered from grocery aisles, from hair appointments, from cars Duke sent without asking her, or from the back of arenas while someone was telling her where to sit. Now she's cut the line.

Blocked.

I set the phone facedown on the bed and stand. The room tilts a little, though I'm not drunk. I was last night. Not enough to excuse a single thing, but enough that my body has a dull ache and my mouth tastes like old whiskey and panic.

In the bathroom, her things are still lined up on the counter. Skin cream. Toothbrush. A perfume bottle with a gold cap. I pick it up, then put it down without spraying it because I can't stand the idea of making this room smell like her when she isn't here.

Downstairs, the kitchen is spotless. There are no coffee grounds spilled by the machine. No grocery list in Emmy’s handwriting. No mug abandoned near the sink because she gotdistracted answering one of Duke’s six hundred questions about my schedule.

I open the fridge. Three waters. Cut fruit in a glass container. Some green juice I hate that Emmy bought because she said my blood was probably ninety percent gas station coffee. I close it.

This house photographs beautifully. It has appeared in two magazine profiles and one documentary segment where I said something easy about wanting a place to come home to. I want to punch that man in the mouth. Emmy was right. This isn't a home. It's a stage with better countertops.

My phone starts ringing upstairs. For one wild second, hope hits so hard I grip the edge of the island. Then the ringtone stops and starts again.

Not hers. Different tone. Duke.

I leave it.

The ringing stops. A voicemail appears. Then another call, then another.

I walk to the living room and stop in the doorway. The television is a black mirror. I can see myself in it: wrinkled shirt, hair wrecked, jaw dark, eyes not quite right. I look like a man after a long night. I don't look like a man whose wife just left him. That kind of damage ought to show more.

Duke’s voicemail plays because my thumb does it before I can think.

“Cade. I know you’re sore. I know this is personal. But you need to ride the wave right now. Just for right now. We can control the language if we move fast. Call me.”

I delete it.