Chapter 3
Chapter Three
EMMY
The marble island is cold under my forearms. It's always cold. Morning, afternoon, midnight. The whole kitchen could be on fire, and this marble would still feel like something lifted from a mausoleum and polished for a magazine spread.
“Mrs. Tyler?”
I lift my head. Brenda, the housekeeper, stands by the pantry doors with a tablet tucked against her chest. She's kind, efficient, and terrified of scuff marks. “Do you want the flowers replaced before Mr. Tyler gets back?”
I look at the arrangement in the center of the island. White roses. White orchids. Branches stripped of leaves and made elegant by someone who's never loved a messy thing in her life.
“They look fine,” I say.
“They’re starting to brown at the edges.”
I almost laugh. “Go ahead and replace them.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ma’am. Mrs. Tyler. Cade’s wife. I try to remember the last time someone in this house called me Emmy without needing something from me afterward.
The refrigerator hums. Somewhere beyond the kitchen, a vacuum starts up, soft and expensive.
This house eats sound. Cade calls it good acoustics when he’s being generous and too damn big when he comes home tired enough to be honest. It has twenty-two rooms, four guest suites, a glass wine wall, heated bathroom floors, and a staircase that looks beautiful in photos but feels foolish to climb in socks.
A decorator chose most of it. The matte black fixtures.
The hand-knotted rugs. The giant abstract painting in the front hall that looks like a storm cloud rendered with zero personality.
Cade liked the way the house photographed, and Duke liked the way it said superstar without saying new money. No one asked what I liked.
That isn't entirely fair. Cade asked once, early on, standing in this kitchen with a bottle of champagne in his hand and a real estate agent waiting discreetly near the foyer.
“What do you think, babe?”
I remember looking at all the white stone and glass and thinking of fingerprints. Thinking of Sunday biscuits. Thinking of dog hair we didn’t have because a dog would be complicated with touring.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
He grinned like I'd given him something. “Then it’s ours.”
It's ours in the way a hotel room is yours if your suitcase is open on the luggage rack. My phone buzzes beside Cade’s green tea with honey. His assistant, Carly.
9:15 call moved to 9:40. Duke wants fresh Wildfire clip pushed by noon. Melody tagged Cade again.
I stare at Melody’s name until the screen dims. Then I do what I do. I open the scheduling app, move the call, confirm the driver, check Cade’s vocal rest block, and pull up his socials.
There are three new tagged clips from last night. Cade and Melody in a rehearsal room. Cade laughing with his head tipped back. Melody’s hand briefly on his sleeve. Nothing. Always nothing. A collection of nothings big enough to build a second life inside.
I choose the least intimate clip and save it to Cade’s drafts with a caption that makes him sound grateful and harmless.
Still feeling the love from awards week. Thank y’all for making this song part of your lives.
I delete the flame emoji Carly added. Then I put the kettle on and line up Cade’s vocal warm-ups on the kitchen speaker. He likes the same pattern before studio days. Steam. Straw phonation. Gentle scales. Honey, never lemon if he has to push above a G.
I know the maintenance schedule of my husband’s voice better than I know the sound of my own anymore.
Once, people waited up to hear me talk. Not millions.
Not arenas. Just enough lonely people between midnight and four to make a girl feel useful.
Emmy Sutton on WHLR, sliding into dark kitchens and truck cabs and nursing stations, telling somebody to be careful on Route 18 because the fog was sitting low by Tandy Creek.
I used to know how to fill a quiet room without making anyone feel alone in it.
Now I stand in a kitchen big enough for a cooking show and prepare my husband’s throat for another song everyone thinks belongs to another woman.
The drawer sticks. It always has, which is the only personal thing about the study.
I yank it harder than I mean to, and a stack of old folders slides forward. Insurance papers. House documents. Receipts from the tour accountant. A packet of warranty information for an espresso machine I still don’t know how to use.
Then I see the blue folder. My fingers stop.
It's cheap, bent at one corner, the kind of folder you buy three for a dollar at a grocery store in late August. I keep it under the useful things because I'm apparently still sentimental in secret.
Inside are photocopies, not the originals.
The originals are somewhere in storage, probably in a box labeled MISC because when we moved into the first big house, I let someone else pack my life.
The paper is thin and soft from being handled. Pencil lines blur where nineteen-year-old me pressed too hard.
A little house sits in the center of the first page.
Not impressive. Not mansion-worthy. A porch wraps around two sides, wide enough for rocking chairs and muddy boots.
The kitchen faces east because I wanted morning light over the sink.
Above it, tucked under a sloped roof, is a reading nook with built-in shelves and a window seat just deep enough to nap in.
On the second page, I drew the yard. A dogwood tree stands off the porch steps, not centered. I wrote pink if we can find one beside it, then crossed it out and wrote white is better in spring rain.
I sit down on the study floor and look through the remnants of my youthful dreams.
Cade held these pages in a motel room outside Knoxville thirteen years ago.
We were eating gas station sandwiches on a bedspread with cigarette burns on it, and he'd just played a forty-minute opening set to a crowd more interested in darts than music.
He looked at my crooked little drawings like I'd handed him blueprints for heaven.
“You designed this?” he asked.
“Don’t sound so shocked.”
He smiled, tired and handsome. “You're very specific about porch depth."
“Porch depth matters.”
He traced the roofline with one finger. “Someday I’m gonna build you exactly this.”
I told him he didn’t have to say things like that.
He looked up at me then, serious in a way that made my whole chest go soft. “I wouldn't say them if I didn't want to.”
He bought four mansions. One outside Nashville. One in Franklin we sold after eight months because Duke said it didn’t match the brand. A lake house we visit twice a year. A mountain place with a studio he uses when he wants to feel humble with a chef on call.
None of them have a reading nook over the kitchen. None of them have a dogwood. None of them are the house.
The study door opens. I jerk the folder closed like I’ve been caught with another man.
Cade stands in the doorway wearing black jeans, a faded T-shirt, and the distracted softness of someone already halfway into the day without me. His hair is damp from the shower.
“There you are,” he says. “I was looking for my capo.”
I press my palm flat over the folder. “In the music room, probably.”
He glances down at me. “You okay?”
The question is gentle. That almost makes it worse.
“I’m okay.”
He steps inside, looking around like the capo might have wandered into the desk by itself. His phone buzzes in his hand. He checks it, smiles faintly, and types something back.
I know better than to ask. I ask anyway. “Melody?”
His thumb pauses. “Duke.”
It may even be true.
I look down at the blue folder. “Do you remember this?”
Cade’s eyes move from his phone to the paper. For a second, the room changes. Recognition crosses his face, small but real.
“Your little house,” he says.
My throat tightens. “Our little house.”
“Yeah.” He smiles. “God, I haven’t seen those in years.”
“I found them in the drawer.”
He comes closer, crouches, and touches the edge of the folder. Not the pages. Just the folder, like the memory might stain him if he holds it too long.
“You were so proud of these,” he says.
“I was.”
He hears something in my voice then. Not enough, but something. His smile fades a little. “Babe.”
Before he can say anything else, his phone buzzes again. He looks, and the moment folds itself up and disappears.
“I’ve got to run soon,” he says. “Session got moved.”
“Of course.”
He stands. “Can you send Carly the updated schedule? She keeps putting me in interviews during vocal rest, and I swear to God, I’m gonna lose my mind.”
“I already fixed it.”
“See?” He leans down and kisses the top of my head. “That’s my girl.”
I wait up that night.
The house goes dark by degrees. Staff leave through the side entrance. The security lights come on beyond the pool. The city glows faintly through the windows, Nashville lit and alive while I sit curled at the end of a sofa no one has ever spilled popcorn on.
At 11:43, Cade texts:
Leaving soon.
At 12:28, he texts:
One more pass. Sorry babe.
At 1:16, headlights sweep across the front windows. I stand before I can decide not to.
Cade comes in quietly, guitar case in one hand, phone in the other. He looks tired and wired, the way he does when the room gave him something good. His face softens when he sees me.
“Hey,” he says. “You didn’t have to wait up.”
“I wanted to see you.”
A flicker of guilt. Then the smile. “Well, lucky me.”
He sets the guitar down and crosses to kiss me. It's a good kiss if judged by technique. Warm mouth, familiar hand at my waist, a little hum in his throat like he remembers me. My body answers because it's loved him longer than it's known how to protect itself.
When he pulls back, I keep my hand on his arm. “Can we talk for a minute?”
His eyes flick toward the stairs. “Now?”
The word isn't cruel. It's worse. It's weary.
“Just a minute.”
“Okay.” He rubs a hand over his face. “Yeah. What’s up?”
I've rehearsed this gently because I still think gentleness might save me. No accusations. No crying. No saying Melody’s name like a weapon.
“I’m worried the whole Wildfire thing has gotten too big.”
His expression changes so slightly someone else might miss it. I don’t. I've spent years studying his face.
“What do you mean?”
“The story around it. You and Melody. The clips. The interviews. The cameras keep finding my face, Cade.”
He exhales, not quite a sigh. “Em.”
“I know it’s promo. I know it’s a song. But people are making me part of it.”
“People talk.”
“They’re not just talking. They’re watching me react to my own marriage like it’s entertainment.”
He looks pained for a second, and hope rises in me so fast it hurts.
Then he says, “You’re imagining the worst of it.”
I let go of his arm. “I’m not imagining the camera.”
“No, but you’re giving it too much weight.” His voice stays soft, careful. “It’s just a bit for the show. Duke says the audience loves seeing that everyone’s cool with it.”
“Everyone?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I don’t think I do.”
He steps closer, reaching for me again. “Don’t make this weird, babe.”
The sentence is small. Almost tender. A door closing with a quiet click.
“I’m trying to tell you I’m hurt.”
“I know.” He presses his thumb against the inside of my wrist. “And I hate that. But there’s nothing happening. You know me.”
I want to say that knowing him is exactly why this scares me. I know when music has him. I know when a room is feeding him. I know when he's choosing not to see the thing he'd have to change if he admitted it was real.
Instead, I say, “I miss you.”
His face softens fully then, and for one weak second, I think I’ve found him.
“I miss you too.” He cups my cheek. “This is just a season. The song’s hot, the label’s excited, and everybody’s running hard. It’ll calm down.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
He kisses my forehead. Not my mouth this time.
“I’ve got a ten a.m. writing session,” he murmurs. “Let’s talk tomorrow, okay?”
I'm still standing there with his thumbprint warm on my wrist when he picks up his guitar and goes upstairs.
Tomorrow. Soon. Someday.
My whole marriage is built out of words that keep moving farther away.
I go back to the study after he falls asleep. The blue folder waits where I left it, thin and stubborn beneath my hand.
I open to the dogwood again.
At nineteen, I knew exactly where I wanted the tree. At thirty-two, I stand in a mansion with five fireplaces and ask my husband whether I'm allowed to feel burned.
That's the part I can't stop looking at. Not Melody. Not the cameras. Not even the award speech still replaying online for strangers who like my pain in short clips.
It’s this.
Somewhere along the way, I started bringing Cade my hurt like an application, asking him to review whether the ache in my chest meets the standard for what counts as real.
If he says I’m imagining it, I try to unlearn what I saw.
If he says it’s nothing, I fold myself smaller around the nothing until it has room to sit between us.
If he kisses my forehead, I call it tenderness because the alternative is admitting he's learned how to end a conversation without raising his voice.
I press the sketch flat with both hands.
The little house looks back at me, patient and impossible. Porch. Nook. Dogwood. A life drawn by a girl who hadn't yet learned to ask permission to want one.
And I understand, sitting there in the cold, beautiful room my husband bought instead, that Cade granting or denying my pain has become the entire frame of my life.