Page 37 of A Song for Another Woman

“When?”

I say nothing.

Cy nods like that's the answer. “That recording may be missing context. I know it is. But you didn’t just snap her heart in half with one bad sentence. That was the final tear. You’ve been stomping on Emmy’s heart for at least a year. Nobody’s got a heart strong enough to survive all that.”

The foyer blurs. Not with tears, not yet, but with memory.

I see her in the bedroom doorway, asking if I could take one clean look at what was happening with Melody. I hear my own voice:It’s just a bump in the road. It’ll all settle down after the rollout.

I see her in a champagne dress on a giant screen, smiling while I made her smaller than my career.

My knees don't give, but something in me does. And then, because grief is cruel, the good years come too.

Emmy in the back of my pickup in a field outside Nashville after my first single hit, laughing against my mouth because the radio was playing my song. We were too poor for champagne, so we drank gas station soda from the bottle and made love under a quilt she kept behind the seat.

Emmy at the Whippoorwill in Harmony Ridge, boots sticking to the floor, dancing with me when I was still playing three-hour sets for less than a hundred dollars and free wings. She knew every word before anyone else did. Sang them back at me like faith.

Emmy in the audience at my first arena show, both hands pressed to her mouth, proud enough to break me open. I sang the bridge to her because the whole world had gone bright, but she was the only thing I could see.

I sit down on the bottom stair because standing suddenly feels ambitious. “What the fuck have I done, Cy?” I ask. My voice sounds scraped raw.

Cy exhales through his nose. For the first time since he walked in, his anger loosens around the edges. He sits beside me, leaving one stair between us.

“Well,” he says, “you’ve been a stupid shit, that’s what.”

I press the heels of my hands into my eyes. A laugh breaks out of me, ugly and wet. “That your professional opinion?”

“Personal and professional.”

I lower my hands.

He looks at me, steady. “But I imagine you could try to fix it.”

“How?” The word comes out like I'm asking for mercy. Maybe I am.

Cy leans his forearms on his knees. “By finally making her the most important part of your life instead of chasing after the dumb shit that don’t matter.”

I look around the foyer: the high ceiling, the polished floor, the table chosen by a decorator because Emmy and I were too busy becoming people we didn't recognize. Somewhere in this house is a drawer with my copy of her old sketches. I know because I kept them. I kept them and then built everything except the one thing I promised.

The phone on the side table lights up again. Duke.

For a few seconds, I watch it ring. Then I stand, cross the foyer, and turn it off.

The silence that follows isn't peace. It isn't forgiveness, and it isn't even a plan. It's just the first honest thing I've done in days.

Cy stays on the stairs, watching me.

“I don’t know her dreams anymore,” I say. The sentence cuts deeper out loud. Cy doesn't rescue me from it.

I look toward the kitchen, where Emmy used to stand in the morning light, making coffee in a house that never deserved her. “I should.”

“Yeah,” Cy says quietly. “You should.”

I nod once, though it doesn't fix anything. Nothing fixes anything right now.

My wife is in Harmony Ridge, tired and hiding under a ball cap because strangers are hunting her face. She's blocked my number. She has every right to. And I'm standing in a silent mansion I built instead of the home I promised, realizing I've been calling love a feeling while letting every choice say otherwise.

I don't know how to get her back. I don't even know if I deserve to try. But for the first time since the wave hit, I understand the wave for what it is. Not music. Not fire. Not fate. A thing that carried me because I stopped planting my feet.