Page 77 of A Song for Another Woman

The baby sits between us now, impossible to hide from a woman trained to notice every weakness in a room. Melody’s mouth trembles. “Does he know?”

The question hits harder than it should. I look at the phone. At the proof she carried around while my life cracked open. At the girl in front of me who wanted to be chosen so badly she helped make another woman’s pain profitable. At myself, standing in the booth I fought my way back to, one hand over Cade Tyler’s child.

“No,” I say.

Melody closes her eyes. “I really am sorry,” she says.

This time, I believe she is. It doesn't fix anything. It doesn't hand me back the nights I spent listening for his truck. It doesn't erase the arena, the camera, the champagne dress, the pity dressed up as concern. It doesn't make her innocent. But it puts one true thing on the table.

I pick up my phone. My thumb hovers over Cade’s name, still blocked, still buried where I left it the morning I drove home. Then I unblock him.

Outside, the WHLR sign buzzes against the dark. Somewhere across town, the Whippoorwill is probably closing down, Cade loading his guitar into his truck with sore hands and no idea the last locked door has just opened.

Melody looks at my stomach again, then back at my face. “Does he know?” she asks once more, barely above a whisper.

My hand tightens around the phone. “No,” I say. “But he’s about to.”

Chapter Nineteen

CADE

The empty spot at the bar stays empty through the first chorus. I don't look at it. That's a lie. I look at it every time my left hand slides down the neck, every time the neon sign over Hal's good whiskey flickers blue against the bottles, and every time somebody laughs near the end of the bar. My body forgets itself long enough to think,Emmy.

It's Saturday night, and the Whippoorwill is full enough that the front windows fog at the corners. Boots scuff the old floor, and beer sweats through napkins. Hal moves behind the bar with his towel over one shoulder, his face set in the cranky concentration of a man pretending he hasn't been saved. Cy is in the back, half in shadow, his steel case propped against the wall. He hasn't played with me tonight. He said this set was mine to carry. So I carry it.

My fingers ache. My voice is rough. I'm halfway through a song I wrote when I was twenty-six and stupid enough to believe wanting a thing hard made me worthy of keeping it. The town knows the words better now. They sing low with me, not loud, not trying to turn the room into an arena.

The Whip doesn't do arenas. The Whip does sticky floors, bad wiring, and a stage barely tall enough to call itself one. Itdoes Hal's pickled eggs, the old neon bird over the bar, and the place near the end where Emmy Sutton once leaned on her elbow and watched a broke musician sing.

That spot is empty. It's been empty every weekend. Sometimes somebody drifts into it, orders a drink, and then moves away without anyone saying a word. I don't know if Harmony Ridge has made a church out of that little stretch of wood or if I have. Either way, I play to it.

I'm playing to it when the door opens. Cold air slides across the room. A few heads turn first, irritated by the draft. Then the room changes. Not loud, not dramatic, just a shift. It's like every person inside the Whip takes the same breath and decides not to let it out too fast.

My thumb misses the string. The note goes wrong.

Emmy stands just inside the door.

For one second, my mind refuses to make sense of her there and gives me pieces instead: dark hair loose around her shoulders; black sweater, soft and long; one hand curled at the strap of her purse. Her face is pale from the cold, or from courage, or from whatever it cost her to put her hand on that door and walk into a room where half this town knows exactly what I've been begging for without words. She's here. My heart hits once, hard enough to make the guitar shift against my chest.She's here.

The empty spot at the bar isn't empty anymore because Emmy crosses the room and takes it. No one stops her. No one greets her too loudly. Mabel Tandy turns on her stool and then turns right back around, blinking fast. Pop Dobbs, near the wall, lowers his chin like he's giving somebody privacy inside a crowd. Hal reaches for a glass, misses it, and wipes at his eyes with the towel like the thing offended him. Cy doesn't move. He just watches me, steady and quiet, from the back.

Emmy's gaze lifts to mine. The setlist on the floor might as well be a grocery receipt in another language.

I stop playing. The last chord fades into the rafters. Nobody claps. Nobody coughs. The Whip holds still around us, all ninety people doing the impossible kindness of being present and looking away at the same time.

I step closer to the mic. My mouth is dry. "Need to change this one," I say, my voice coming out low and frayed. A couple people shift. Hal turns his back and starts rearranging bottles that don't need arranging.

I look down at my guitar because if I keep looking at her, I might walk off this stage before the song has a chance to do what I've never managed with speech. My fingers find the old progression by muscle memory. Not one of the new songs. Not the ones the internet tore apart and put back together. Not the apology tracks with my heart on my sleeve. This one is older. From before the awards, before Melody, and before Duke learned how to turn chemistry into a campaign while I let him. It's the first song I sang after Emmy interviewed me at WHLR.

She remembers. I see it on her face. Her hand tightens around the purse strap, and her mouth parts like the room has pushed air into her too quickly.

I sing it badly at first. Not pitch. Pitch is easy and has never been the problem. I sing it badly because my throat keeps trying to close around her name, and the song doesn't have her name in it, not anywhere anyone else can hear. It has the rain from that night, the cheap station coffee, the motel carpet, and the way she looked at me over the mic and told me to try again.

She stands at the bar and listens, not forgiving, not softened into something easy. Her face still carries the arena, the kitchen, the recording, and the months I let strangers hold her pain up to the light. She looks tired in a way fame never photographed properly. She looks beautiful, which isn't useful and isn't thepoint, but my heart notices anyway. My heart has never been disciplined where Emmy is concerned.

When the song ends, I don't let the room clap. I move straight into the next: our first slow-dance song.

That old jukebox used to play it with a warble in the second verse, back when I had seventy-three dollars in checking and Emmy still let me put my hand at her waist like I had any business touching something that precious.