Page 68 of A Song for Another Woman

“I know you did.” He nods toward the board. “Sounded good doing it.”

I look down at the playlist so he won’t see my eyes. “That’s the job.”

“No, sugar,” he says quietly. “That’s you.”

I don’t answer. The song ends, and I put my headphones back on before kindness can get under my skin.

At 3:08 in the morning, I sit on the edge of June’s guest bed with one earbud in and my phone glowing in my lap. I lasted nine hours after the first request. That’s not nothing, but it's also not enough.

The house is quiet except for June’s old pipes knocking when the heat kicks on. My cardigan is buttoned wrong, one button slipped into the wrong hole, and my hair smells like diner greasebecause I stopped by after the show and let June feed me toast at midnight like I’m a stray with a driver’s license.

The song waits on my screen. No cover art. No clever title treatment. Just Cade’s name and two words:For her.

I hate those two words.

I touch play. His guitar comes in first, old Martin tone, rough at the edges and not studio-perfect. I hear the scrape of his fingers on the strings and a breath before the first line. Then his voice comes in, low and raw enough that my body knows it before my mind can defend itself.

He sings about a girl in a radio booth who asked him better questions than men twice her age. My hand flies to my mouth. No one knew that. Not the way he sings it. Not the cheap headphones, the midnight coffee, or the way I’d warned him not to talk while I faded out a caller. That memory belonged to us. I thought maybe I'd carried it alone all these years, tucked under everything that came after.

The second verse is worse. The sketches. The drawer. The house he never built.

I close my eyes, but that only brings his voice closer. He doesn’t make himself noble in the song, nor does he make me soft and forgiving. He sings about being handed a dream and storing it with receipts, about building rooms big enough to impress strangers while his wife had nowhere to curl up and feel known.

My breath comes apart. By the last verse, he is singing about the night at the awards. Not Melody. Not the duet. Me.

I watched them turn their lights on you

and still I didn’t move.

The phone blurs in my hand. There is no audience in this recording. That’s the terrible part. No clapping to hide inside, no Duke, no Silver Creek, and no camera finding his best angle. He sounds tired, ashamed, and plain. He sounds like a man telling the truth to a dark room because the truth finally got too heavy to hold.

I pull the earbud out before the song ends. The room keeps ringing anyway.

I sit there with my palm pressed low on my stomach, over the secret that has started rounding me out no matter how many sweaters I wear. In the bedside drawer, beneath June’s spare charger and a stack of paperbacks, the sonogram picture waits inside an envelope. Black and white. Grainy. Impossible. Mine.

The doctor a town over had smiled when she handed it to me, and for one second I nearly looked over my shoulder for Cade. He should've been there asking too many questions. He should've cried and pretended he wasn’t. He should've walked out holding that picture like the whole world had narrowed to something smaller than his palm. Instead, I tucked it into my purse, drove home alone, and bought saltines at the gas station.

I know I have to tell him. Not tonight, and not because of a song. But someday soon, because Harmony Ridge is small, my body is changing, and secrets don’t stay polite forever.

I put the phone face down and lie back without turning off the lamp. His voice keeps finding me in the silence.

The diner is loud enough at lunch to make the windows sweat. June moves behind the counter with a coffeepot in one hand. “You need to sit down.”

“I'm standing perfectly.”

“You are standing like a woman trying to convince gravity she’s management.”

“I had toast.”

“When?”

I think about that. “Recently.”

June’s face goes flat.

“I’m fine,” I say, reaching for a tray stacked with plates.

The room tilts. Not dramatically at first, just a small slide like the floor changed its mind. I grab the edge of the counter while the plates rattle. Heat rushes up my neck, then drains so fast my hands go cold.