Page 43 of A Song for Another Woman
His mouth twitches. “Historic numbers.”
“They were still numbers.”
He points at me with the receiver. “Small-market stations don’t get historic numbers, Emmy Lou. We get modest numbers. Respectable numbers. Occasionally troubling numbers.”
I sit up, rubbing the crease the legal pad has left on my cheek. “Are we in troubling?”
“We’re in ‘a man from Knoxville used the phrase national interest, and I had to sit down’ numbers.”
My stomach flips. It has been doing that a lot lately, so I refuse to give the flip any authority.
Pop returns to the call, his voice going careful. “Yes, sir. I understand. Well, you can email me like everybody else, and I’ll pretend I know how to open it.”
I stare through the glass at the empty studio. The red light is off now. The mic waits on its stand, plain, black, and patient. Two weeks ago, it felt like stepping up to a witness stand. Now it feels like the one place where no one can make me smaller.
The clips are everywhere. Not the old clips. Not my face in an arena while the country studied whether I was about to break. These are different. Better. Mine.
A widow from Cedar Mill Road talking about setting two coffee cups out every morning. A truck driver crying over twins he loves and the silence he also needs. Me telling a woman from Pikeville that starting over isn’t the same as failing, even if both make you want to lie on the kitchen floor for a while.
Pop hangs up and turns slowly, one hand still on the phone. “That was a gentleman who used the word syndication like he knew what it meant.”
I make my face blank. “Pop.”
“I’m not saying anything.”
“You're vibrating.”
“I am a contained professional.”
“You are eighty percent coffee and bad ideas.”
He grins then, helpless and bright. “They’re listening to you, Sutton.”
The sentence should scare me more than it does. It does scare me. I’m not stupid.
But this is different. They’re not listening because my husband forgot how to choose me in public. They’re listening. That difference feels like a door opening.
I press my fingers to the edge of the desk. “I’m not ready to talk about national anything.”
“Good,” Pop says. “Neither am I. My blood pressure can’t afford geography.”
I laugh, and the laugh turns my stomach. Hard.
I swallow fast and reach for the paper cup beside me. Mint tea. Cold now. It doesn’t help, but holding it gives me something to do.
Pop notices. He may pretend to be a crusty old relic held together by nicotine patches and stubbornness, but he sees everything that matters.
“You all right?”
“Fine.”
His brows rise.
“Tired,” I correct.
That one is true enough to stand on. I am tired. I am also alive in a way I forgot was possible.
Pop looks like he wants to press. Then the phone rings again.
