Page 88 of A Song for Another Woman

“That’s not an answer.”

I brush her hair back from her face. “I was busy.”

“With what?”

“Meeting our baby.”

Her mouth softens. She looks younger like this. Tired, bare-faced, warm from sleep, with my shirt slipping off one shoulder. Then something cautious moves through her eyes.

I touch her cheek before she can retreat behind it. “Don’t hide from me.”

“I don’t know how to do this yet.”

“Me either.”

Her gaze searches mine.

“We’ll relearn,” I say.

The baby moves beneath my hand.

Emmy laughs quietly and covers my fingers with hers. “Bossy already.”

“Gets that from you.”

She gives me a look. I kiss her before she can decide whether to be offended. She smiles against my mouth, and the morning opens around it. Soon, we'll have to move, before the morning crew shows up. But for now, I just hold her.

That night, I sit in the WHLR booth with headphones around my neck and my hand wrapped around Emmy’s. Pop stands on the other side of the glass pretending not to cry. June is in the corner with her arms folded, watching me like she still might throw me through a wall if I blink wrong. Fair enough.

The red light comes on.

Emmy leans toward the mic, her wedding ring glinting on the hand.

“Good evening, Harmony Ridge,” she says, her voice steady and warm. “It’s Emmy Sutton. I’ve got two announcements tonight.”

My throat tightens.

“The first is thatBackroad Countryis going to be heard in a few more places soon,” she says. “We’ll talk about that more tomorrow.”

Pop presses his hand over his mouth. Emmy looks at me through the glass.

“The second,” she says, softer now, “is that I’m having a baby.”

June cries first. Pop goes next.

I watch my wife in the room where her voice belongs and listen to the silence after her words fill the county.

Then Emmy smiles, small and sure. “And before anybody asks, yes. Cade knows.”

She turns her face toward me, still on air, still entirely herself.

“He’s right here.”

Epilogue

EMMY

The dogwood is blooming the way I drew it at nineteen. Just the tree I wanted, white petals opening over the porch steps, a little off-center in the yard.