Page 34 of A Song for Another Woman

Another one plays. “Listen to me. Do not make a statement without me. Do not go online. Do not call her in a way that can be leaked. We’re getting sympathy in some markets, heat in others, but the song is exploding. I need you clear-headed.”

I throw the phone onto the couch. It bounces once and lands screen-up, bright with missed calls. Duke. Duke. Duke. Cy.

That one I look at. I let it go to voicemail anyway.

A minute later, his voice fills the room, low and rough. “Pick up the damn phone, Cade.”

That's the whole message. I almost laugh, but nothing comes out.

For a while, I do nothing. I sit on the edge of a sofa Emmy never liked because she said it made guests perch instead of settle. I stare at the blank television. I don't turn it on. I don't open my laptop. I don't look at the world. The world has already taken enough of my marriage.

I keep seeing the garage instead. Emmy in that old blue truck, hands tight on the wheel. The folder buckled into the passenger seat. Her face when she said,I believe you did at one point.

I love you,I'd said. I said it like those three words were a handhold.

She looked at me like they were a memory.

Anger comes first because anger is easier to hold than the other thing. She didn't listen. She wouldn't let me explain. She had one ugly piece of audio, and that was enough for a verdict. How could she believe I would do that to her? To us? How could Emmy, who knows me down to the bone, think I wanted Melody Hunter over my wife?

I pace the living room, my bare feet silent on polished wood. “She knows me,” I say out loud, like there's somebody here to agree.

The house doesn't.

A voice in the back of my mind says, quiet and mean,Does she?

I shove it down.

She was supposed to know it was a play. The stage stuff. The interviews. Melody tilting her head and saying things just close enough to dangerous that everybody leaned in. Duke called it heat. The label called it momentum. Lonesome Strings called it market alignment, which is a stupid phrase that somehow came with enough zeroes to make a grown man forget his own name.

And me? I called it work. I called it strategy. I called it a bump in the road when my wife stood in this house with pain plain on her face and asked me to take one clean look at what was happening to us.

The voice in my mind gets louder.You knew.

I stop pacing. Because I did. Not all at once, and not in a clean, brave way. But I knew in flashes. In the half second after Melody leaned too close and I didn't step back fast enough. In the silence after Emmy asked why her backstage pass had changed and I told her it was probably just an innocent mistake. In the car after the awards show when Duke said the wife-cam clip was unfortunate but useful, and I told myself I would deal with him later.

Later.That word has been the cheapest thing I ever gave Emmy.

By the second day, the house has started to smell wrong. Not bad, just empty. Air conditioning, lemon cleaner, and the faint stale bite of coffee I made and didn't drink. There are plates in the sink because I put them there and then couldn't make myself rinse them, which would have driven Emmy quietly insane.

I call her again. Straight to voicemail.

I text:

Please call me.

No answer.

I need to know you’re safe.

Nothing.

Then, because pain apparently makes a man stupid in new directions, I type:Emmy, you have to let me explain.

I stare at it for a full minute before deleting it. She doesn't have to let me do anything. That realization makes me so angry I nearly throw the phone again, because it sounds too much like truth.

Duke leaves six more messages. Cy leaves three.

On the third morning, I break. Not because I'm ready, but because not knowing has become its own room, and I'm trapped in it.