Page 76 of A Song for Another Woman

“I didn’t,” she says again, softer. “But I knew. I knew what it made people think. I knew what it made you think.”

My hand is still gripping the console. If I let go, I might find out I'm shaking. “You let it stand.”

“Yes.” The word is small and bare. She looks down at the phone, and a tear drops onto the black screen before she wipes itaway with the heel of her hand. No camera. No soft lighting. No pretty angle. “It sold records,” she says. “It made me look like the woman he couldn’t have. The temptation. The spark. It made the song bigger. It made me bigger.” She swallows hard. “And I told myself if he hated it enough, he’d fix it. Publicly. He’d say my name and choose me or he’d say yours and end it. Either way, I thought I’d matter.”

I feel sick, not just because of her, but because a part of me is still in that kitchen, phone in hand, hearing his voice and feeling something in me shut a door. I built months on that sound. I built a wall with it. I hid behind it. And it was real. And it was not.

Melody wipes beneath her other eye. “There’s more.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“I know.” She nods too fast. “I know. But this is the part I came for.” She swipes to another file. This one has no neat title, just a date and a string of numbers.

“Different night?” I ask.

“Earlier,” she says. “When we were still working on the bridge.” She presses play.

A guitar comes through first, quiet and unfinished. Cade picking out a line, stopping, trying it again. I know that sound. I know the little pause when he finds something he likes but doesn't trust it yet.

Then Melody’s voice, closer to the phone. “You keep pulling back on the chorus.”

Cade gives a tired laugh. “Because it’s not a chorus yet.”

“It is. You just won’t say what it’s about.”

The guitar stops. I hold myself very still.

Cade says, “It’s about Emmy.”

The room inside me goes quiet. On the recording, Melody says nothing. Cade plays two soft notes. “It was always about Emmy.”

“That line?” Melody asks, and I can hear her trying to keep it light. “Tell me you felt it before I burn alone?”

“First night at WHLR,” Cade says. “She asked me what I wanted people to hear when they heard me. I gave some stupid answer about grit and truth because I was twenty-five and trying to sound like a man with a biography.” His voice shifts, softer, nearer. “She didn’t laugh at me. She just leaned toward the mic and said, ‘That’s the answer you give people when you want to sound artistic and important. Try again.’ Too damn young to be that damned wise and I was mesmerized."

My hand flies to my mouth as I remember it. The rain. The cheap headphones. His boots dripping on Pop’s old carpet. The way he looked at me like I'd caught him with his guard down and he was deciding whether to resent me for it.

On the tape, Cade breathes out. “I went back to the motel and wrote until daylight,” he says. “Not a good song. Too many words. Bad second verse. But every song after that had her in it somewhere.”

Melody’s voice is quieter now. “EvenWildfire?”

“EspeciallyWildfire.”

The guitar resumes, the beginning of the chorus, rough and low.

Melody stops the recording. I don't move.

The song on the WHLR board fades into its last steel notes. Through the glass, Pop watches me with one hand braced on his desk, his face drawn and careful. My eyes burn so hard the room blurs.

For months, I've been trying to make my heart understand that love songs can lie, that pretty words can be arranged around an empty center, that a man can sound wrecked and still not be safe. But this isn't a song. This is Cade in a room where he doesn't know I'll ever hear him. Cade tired and unguarded. Cade saying my name before there was anything to gain by it.

I press my palm low over my stomach. Melody sees the movement, her gaze dropping just for a second before her face changes.

“Oh,” she whispers.

I step back from the console. “Don’t.”

“I won’t.” She lifts both hands, the phone still caught in one of them. “I won’t say anything.”