Page 35 of A Song for Another Woman

I open my laptop at the kitchen island. The first thing I see is Emmy’s face. Not her real face. Not the one soft with sleep or sharp with concentration, nor the one that used to turn toward me from the crowd before anyone knew my name. This is the awards show clip. Her smile held in place like a door braced against wind.

The caption says:

THE WILDFIRE WIFE CAM GETS WORSE EVERY TIME.

I close my eyes. When I open them, the page is still there.

There are edits now. Slow motion. Zooms. People circling the moment Melody hugs me at the podium. People reading my speech like scripture. People pretending concern while replaying my wife’s humiliation for sport.

Some defend her. Some pity her. Some blame her for not leaving sooner, and some blame her for leaving at all. I see one comment calling her bitter, and for a second I consider making afake account just to tell a stranger to keep my wife’s name out of their mouth. My hands actually move toward the keyboard.

Then I stop, because I can hear Emmy in the foyer:You can keep the narrative, too.

I sit back, sick.

A video autoplays. Melody in an interview from yesterday, hair soft, eyes wide, hands folded like she's being very brave.

“I never wanted to be a home wrecker,” she says in that sweet little aw-shucks voice that's always played well on camera. “I think people see chemistry and they want to make it messy, but Cade and I just have this artistic connection. I respect marriage so much.” She gives a tiny, wounded laugh after she says it.

I watch her lean into the phrasehome wreckerwhile pretending to step away from it, and something hot and acid rises in my throat. I want to go back in time and punch myself. Not her. Me. For every time I saw the shape of this forming and told myself it was harmless because I knew the truth. As if truth does a damn bit of good when you leave your wife standing alone under a spotlight while everybody else writes the lie for her.

I scroll. My name is everywhere. Melody’s too. Emmy’s is attached like a bruise.

Then I see it. A blurry photo from a gas station in Harmony Ridge. Emmy in a ball cap, shoulders tucked into a loose sweatshirt, turned partly away from whoever took it. June’s car is at the pump behind her. The picture is bad quality, shot through glass or across a parking lot, but I know the angle of Emmy’s neck. I know the way she holds herself when she's trying not to take up space.

She looks tired. Not dramatic. Not shattered for the camera. Just tired in a way I have no right to see because some stranger decided her pain belonged online.

My hand closes around the laptop until the screen wobbles. For one clear second, there's no anger at her. No injured pride,and no defense. There is only the fact that my wife looks like that because of me.

I shut the laptop so hard the sound cracks through the kitchen. Then I sit there breathing like I've run miles.

The pounding on the front door starts just after noon.

At first I think I imagined it. The house is gated, and the security panel is armed. Nobody gets up here without a code unless they're paid to stand outside and keep people away.

The pounding comes again. “Open the damn door,” Cy shouts.

Of course. He's one of the few people with the code. Emmy insisted on that after his divorce, back when he used to show up at odd hours with a guitar and the haunted look of a man who'd spent too long alone. She said any house of ours should have a way in for the people who loved us.

I wonder if she regrets that now.

I open the door. Cy Boone stands on my porch in a black T-shirt, boots dusty, steel-gray hair shoved under his hat, looking madder than hell. He takes one look at me and doesn't soften.

“If you’ve come here to see if I’m alive, you got your answer,” I say.

He pushes past me. “I don’t give a shit if you’re alive. I just wanted to see if you were done being the dumbest motherfucker on planet earth.”

I close the door slowly. “Good to see you too.”

“Don’t start with charming. I’m immune.”

“Clearly.”

He turns in the middle of the foyer, taking in the house, the shirt I've been wearing too long, and the phone dead on the side table. “Jesus, Cade. You look like rich misery.”

I laugh once, mean and empty. “Glad you came all this way for poetry.”

“I came because you won’t answer the phone.”