Page 75 of A Song for Another Woman

She looks at the red ON AIR sign, then at me. “I didn't hear anything but music before I pulled up. Wasn't sure if you'd be here."

For a moment, there's only the low song coming through the monitors and the hum of the board.

“I saw your interview,” I say.

She swallows. “Which one?”

“That bad?”

A little air leaves her. “Yeah.”

I fold my arms carefully, leaving space between my wrist and my stomach. “Why are you here, Melody?”

She reaches into the front pocket of her sweatshirt and pulls out her phone. Every muscle in me goes cold.

“No,” she says quickly. “Not like that. I’m not recording you.”

“You’ll forgive me if that doesn’t soothe.”

“I know.” Her fingers curl around the case. “I have something you should hear.”

“I’ve heard enough from your phone.”

She flinches. It's quick, but I don't miss it. “Not all of it.”

I don't do anything. No nod. I just wait. Melody unlocks the phone with a shaking thumb.

“I should have sent it to you months ago. I should have posted it when everything happened. I didn’t because I was angry and humiliated and because the lie was working for me.” Her voice breaks on the last word. “And then it stopped working. And then I had to look at what was left.”

She sets the phone on the console between us. A file waits on the screen:Studio B Raw. 1:12 a.m.

She touches play. At first, there's only room noise: the muffled scrape of a chair, a cup set down too hard, someone’s tired exhale. Then Melody’s voice comes through the tiny speaker, bright and needling.

“Admit it.”

My whole body knows what's coming before my mind catches up. My hand closes around the edge of the console. Cade’s voice follows, low and worn thin.

“You want the narrative,” he says, “to be that the only reason I’m not with Melody Hunter is because I’m married. That I’d be with Melody instead of the woman I’m married to...”

The recording cuts off with a sharp little rustle. Not silence, but movement: a door opening, and Cy’s voice in the background, hard and sudden. “Cade.”

Melody stops the file.

For a moment, the booth has no air in it. I stare at the phone. The words are the same, exactly the same, and not the same at all.

My memory plays the old clip over it, the one that gutted me in my kitchen.

The only reason I’m not with Melody is because I’m married.

If I wasn’t married, I’d be with Melody.

Clean. Damning. Cropped down until it fit perfectly in the hand. But this file has the beginning. This file has his disgust in it, his exhaustion, the sound of a man naming a lie someone else wanted him to wear.

My throat works, but nothing comes out. Melody’s fingers hover over the phone.

“The version that went online was cut from that. I didn’t post it.”

I look up at her, and she flinches.