Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
EMMY
The WHLR studio still smells like dust, burnt coffee, and warm equipment. I used to love that smell. Tonight it sits in the back of my throat like a dare.
Pop Dobbs stands on the other side of the glass with one hand on the soundboard and the other wrapped around a chipped mug that says WORLD’S OKAYEST BOSS.
The mug is old enough that I remember giving it to him for his fifty-eighth birthday.
He’d laughed so hard he spilled coffee down his shirt, then made me read the weather three times because I kept losing it on air.
That girl feels like someone I used to know from a distance.
“Mic’s hot in thirty,” Pop says through the talkback.
My headphones are too big. Or my head is too small. Or I’ve spent too long letting other people fit me into places I never belonged, and now even something familiar feels like it might reject me. I adjust them anyway.
On the desk in front of me, Pop has left a yellow legal pad, three sharpened pencils, and a stack of index cards with sponsor reads written in his blocky hand.
Rayburn Hardware. Dogwood Diner. McIntyre Feed and Seed.
Nothing with a stylist, a publicist, or a man in an arena telling me where to sit.
Just local businesses trying to keep the lights on.
Just me, if I can remember how to be me.
My phone buzzes face-down beside the legal pad.
June
I'm listening.
A second text follows.
June
And if you throw up from nerves, aim away from the equipment. Pop can’t afford nice things.
I almost smile. It feels strange on my face.
Pop watches me through the glass, his eyebrows lifted. “You ready, Emmy Lou?”
Nobody in Nashville called me Emmy Lou. It would have sounded wrong there.
Too soft. Too home. Too much like the girl who stayed after her shift to re-shelve old records and eat vending machine crackers with the overnight engineer.
Here, it slips through me and lands somewhere sore.
I give him a thumbs-up because my mouth can’t be trusted.
The red ON AIR light blinks once. Then it glows steady. Pop points at me.
For one second, nothing happens. The old board hums beneath my fingertips.
The second hand on the wall clock moves.
My own breathing fills the headphones, too close and too human.
Out beyond the little studio, Harmony Ridge is settling into the evening: dishwashers shutting off, porch lights clicking dark, the last trucks rolling down county roads with headlights cutting through mist. And somewhere, because the world is not merciful enough to look away, people are waiting to hear whether I fall apart.
I lean toward the microphone.
“Good evening, Harmony Ridge,” I say. My voice comes out lower than I expect.
Not broken. Not strong either. Just there.
“This is Emmy Sutton on WHLR Backroad Country, and if you just checked your radio to make sure it’s not 2009, I understand.
I did the same thing when Pop handed me these headphones. ”
Pop’s face changes first. A small grin, quick as a match. My chest loosens by one inch.
“I’m back for the evening show,” I say. “At least for tonight. Pop is calling it a trial run, which is a polite way of saying he’s not sure I remember which buttons not to touch.
So if we accidentally broadcast the county emergency alert test over a Merle Haggard record, please direct your complaints to management. ”
Pop lifts both hands like he's offended.
I take the first song because that's what you do when your hands are shaking. You give the room something older than you. Something sturdy.
The opening steel guitar fills my ears. I slide the fader up and sit back from the mic. My hands are trembling in my lap.
Through the glass, Pop mouths, Breathe.
I do.
For three minutes and twelve seconds, I'm not expected to speak. It should feel like relief. Instead, it gives my brain too much room.
What if nobody calls?
What if everybody calls?
What if the only thing people want from me is the exact piece of myself I came home to protect?
The first line on the phone bank lights up before the song ends. Then the second. Then the third. Pop’s eyes flick down. His mouth tightens. That’s my answer.
The song fades. Pop puts one call through, and I can tell by his face he already regrets it.
“WHLR, you’re on with Emmy in the evening,” I say.
A woman breathes into the line, then whispers, “Is it true he left you for her?”
My body goes still. The studio narrows to the microphone in front of my mouth and the red light above the door. For a second, I’m back in seat 4C with my face twenty feet high over an arena, everyone waiting to see how much I can take without making them uncomfortable.
Pop reaches for the line. I shake my head once.
The caller waits. So does the county.
I could laugh it off. I know how. I could make a joke sharp enough to get clipped by morning. I could be gracious. I could be brittle. I could become the exact thing they tuned in to watch. Instead, I close my eyes.
“No,” I say softly. “That’s not what we’re doing here.”
The silence after it is enormous. My heartbeat hits once. Twice.
“I know some folks found this station tonight because they heard a woman with a messy life was going to sit behind a microphone,” I say.
“And if you came looking for a meltdown, I can understand the curiosity. We all slow down when there are flashing lights on the highway. Doesn’t mean there isn’t a person in the wreck. ”
Pop stops moving.
“I’m not going to gossip about my marriage on this show,” I say.
“I’m not going to name names for sport, and I’m not going to hand out pieces of my hurt like party favors.
But I will tell you this, because maybe somebody out there needs to hear it from a person who is currently sitting upright through sheer stubbornness. ”
My hand closes around a pencil.
“Starting over at thirty-two is strange. It's embarrassing in ways people don’t warn you about. You forget which grocery store has the good apples. You sleep on your sister’s couch and learn the dip in the middle of it.
You find out there are versions of your own face on the internet that strangers know better than you do.
You discover that privacy is not a thing people give you.
It’s a thing you have to build, fence post by fence post.”
The pencil stops shaking.
“So here’s the first post,” I say. “If you call to ambush me about my marriage, we won’t put you through. If you call because it’s late and you’re lonely, or mad, or scared, or tired of pretending you’re fine, that’s different. That’s what this show is for.”
I look through the glass at Pop. His eyes are bright.
“And one more thing,” I say, because if I don’t do it now, I might lose my nerve. “You won’t hear my husband’s records on this show. You won’t hear Melody Hunter’s either. There are plenty of other hours in the day for everybody else’s story. This hour is for ours.”
A breath leaves me. I didn’t realize I was holding it until it’s gone.
“Let’s try that again,” I say. “WHLR, you’re on after sundown. Tell me something true.”
Pop puts the next call through.
A man clears his throat. “Uh. Name’s Travis. I’m hauling produce down I-40, and I been awake since four this morning.”
“Well, Travis,” I say, “first of all, please tell me you’re hands-free, because I've had a difficult week and can't be responsible for a cabbage-related incident on the interstate.”
There's a pause. Then Travis laughs. It's a real laugh, tired and surprised, and it does something to the room.
“I’m hands-free,” he says. “Promise.”
“Good. What’s keeping you up besides vegetables and poor life choices?”
Pop laughs silently behind the glass, one hand over his mouth.
Travis tells me he's driving through the dark because his wife is at home with their newborn twins and he took the extra route for the money. He says he feels guilty leaving her, then guilty wanting quiet, then guilty for being glad nobody is crying in his cab.
“That’s a lot of guilt for one truck,” I say.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Emmy,” I correct gently. “And Travis, I don’t have twins, so I’m not going to pretend I know that exhaustion.
But I do know this. Two things can be true without canceling each other out.
You can love your family and be grateful for ten minutes where nobody needs your body.
That doesn’t make you a bad father. It makes you a person who needs sleep and maybe a gas station burrito with fewer consequences. ”
He laughs again, but it breaks a little in the middle. “I needed somebody to say that,” he says.
“Then I’m glad you called.”
I dedicate the next song to Travis’s wife, who is probably awake whether she wants to be or not. It’s an old Dolly track about tenderness that never needed spectacle to be good. When it starts, Pop looks at me like he's just found a twenty-dollar bill in a winter coat.
The lines keep lighting up. Not all of them make it through. Pop screens with the grim focus of a man defusing small explosives. I catch pieces through the glass when he forgets to lower his voice.
“No, sir, we’re not asking that.”
“No, she just told you the rule.”
“Because I own the station and I said so, that’s why.”
Then he sends me Mrs. Ellen Price from Cedar Mill Road, a widow who still sets two coffee cups out every morning because her hands haven’t learned what her life already knows.
“I feel foolish,” she says.
“You’re allowed,” I tell her. “Grief makes fools of everybody. It’s one of its least charming qualities.”
She gives a watery little laugh. “My Harold liked your show,” she says. “Back when you were on before. He said you had a voice that didn’t rush a body.”
I have to look down. There are compliments that slide right off you. Then there are ones that find the place you thought had gone numb.
“I remember Harold,” I say. “He called every Thursday and pretended it was an accident.”
Mrs. Price laughs for real then. “He did.”
“He asked for Patsy Cline every time.”