Page 2 of A Song for Another Woman

I lift my chin. I make my mouth soft, proud, and peaceful. It's the kind of face America can look at and decide there's nothing to see here. Inside, I'm gripping the armrests hard enough to hurt.

Cade and Melody reach the chorus together, and their voices lock. That's the word everyone uses. Lock. Like fate. Like magic. Like two people finding the exact place they fit.

I hate that they're right. The harmony is beautiful. It's so beautiful I want, for one clear and unreasonable second, to stand up and walk out just so I don't have to be fair about it.

They move closer. Cade’s guitar hangs between them, but barely. Melody tilts her face up as she sings the line everyone has been quoting all summer:Tell me you felt it before I burn alone.

The arena screams. Cade looks down at her. Not at the audience, and not at the cameras. At her.

Their foreheads don't touch. They almost touch, which is worse, because almost gives people room to imagine. Almost makes the whole country complicit.

My chest feels too tight for the dress.

A woman behind me whispers, not quietly enough, “Is that the wife?”

The girl with her says, “I think so.”

I keep my eyes on the stage.The wife. Not Emmy Sutton, who once took calls from truckers at 1:12 a.m. and knew which regular had lost his dog, which single mom needed a birthday song for her son, and which old man called every Thursday and pretended it was an accident. Not the woman who sat on Cade’s motel room floor with a legal pad and helped him rewrite the bridge to “Low Country Mercy” because the first version was trying too hard. Not the person who knew him when his boots had holes in them, back when he still apologized to every sound tech by name.

The wife. A footnote with hair and earrings.

The camera finds me on the jumbotron, and my own face appears above the stage, twenty feet tall and lit too bright. There's a noise from the crowd, a tiny shifting wave of recognition, and my stomach drops through the floor.

I'm smiling. Thank God.

My face is doing what it's been trained to do. My eyes are bright but not wet, and my shoulders are relaxed. I look like a woman generously watching her husband sing a love song with someone else.

The shot lasts maybe two seconds, but it feels longer than my entire marriage. When the screen cuts back to Cade and Melody, the crowd roars its approval like I passed some test.

The song climbs toward the final chorus. Cade steps away from his mic and shares Melody’s. The move is rehearsed. I know that. I saw the rehearsal schedule on Cade’s calendar because I still manage pieces of his life no one thanks me for managing. I know there were lighting notes, camera marks, and blocking. I know it's a performance.

I also know he didn't ride over with me tonight. He had “pre-show obligations.” Melody had the same ones, apparently, because the two of them arrived in the same black SUV while Icame fifteen minutes later with a Silver Creek Records assistant who spent the whole ride reminding me which entrance had fewer photographers.

I know I no longer have the laminate that gets me backstage without someone checking a list. I know the guard tonight glanced at my face, then down at his clipboard, before saying, “Mrs. Tyler, you’re seated out front.”

Out front. Where the wives go.

Onstage, Cade and Melody hold the last note. It stretches and stretches with their faces close, her hand sliding to his forearm as if she needs him to stay upright through the emotion of it. Cade’s eyes close, his jaw tightens, and the vein in his neck stands out.

The crowd loses its mind.

I used to be able to spark that in him.That thought lands so plainly it almost feels spoken.I used to.

The note breaks, the lights flare, and the arena jumps to its feet.

I stand because everyone around me stands, and because a camera is near enough to catch me if I don't. My palms come together. The program shreds cling to the champagne fabric in my lap, little white pieces stuck to me like evidence.

Cade laughs into the applause, breathless and boyish, and Melody throws her arms around his neck. He catches her. Not politely, and not with the careful half-hug men give women when they're trying to prove there's nothing to see. He catches her like joy knocked him backward.

The applause keeps going, and I clap until my hands sting.

The category comes later. I know because I spend the next forty minutes watching the show without retaining a single thing. A comedian makes a joke. Two brothers in matching hats present something. A legend gets a standing ovation. People cry, and people thank God, radio, their mamas, and the fans.

The camera keeps remembering me. Not constantly, since that would be too obvious, but just enough to make me aware of my own breathing. Every time Cade’s name is mentioned, I feel the lens swing near me. Every time Melody’s name is mentioned, too.

Duke stops by during a commercial break, leaning down with one hand on the back of my chair. “You’re doing great,” he says.

I look up at him. “Am I?”