Chapter 23
LAUREL
The next morning, I’m at Vale House’s archival studio, smelling old wood, coffee, and electronics with price tags I’m better off not knowing.
The catalogue diligence requires us to identify which demos belong wholly to me, separate the ones that became co-writes, and trace the songs later incorporated into Grant’s releases.
Evelyn is here for the first hour, a musicologist joins remotely, and Beckett spends most of the session across the console doing actual work rather than brooding handsomely near expensive equipment, which would be more convenient for my nervous system.
We listen through songs I haven’t heard in a decade. Twenty-four-year-old me is earnest as hell. Too many rain metaphors, one truly criminal rhyme involving fire and desire causes Beckett to stop playback and look at me.
“What?” I chuckle, already knowing exactly what he’s thinking. “Say one word and I’ll challenge your entire valuation.”
“I was going to compliment the commitment.”
“You’re a bad liar.”
“I know. Terrible lyric.”
“Thank you.”
We both laugh under our breath, neither of us needing to say anything else, but the sound disappears when the next file starts and Daddy’s voice comes through the studio monitors.
Again from the bridge, baby girl. You’re rushing it because you know the chorus is good.
My hand freezes on the table, and the silence that fills the room nearly makes me choke.
I haven’t heard Thomas Bellamy’s voice in five years.
Videos exist. Voicemails too, somewhere on an old phone I can’t make myself charge.
Grief has strange rules; you can miss a dead person every day and still avoid the sound of them because remembering them is easier when they stay inside your head.
Daddy laughs on the recording, and younger me grumbles that he needs to mind his business.
Your business is in my living room.
A guitar melody starts playing, and my voice, clear and stupidly young and completely mine, comes through the speakers. I cover my mouth.
Evelyn quietly takes the musicologist off speaker; Beckett reaches for the console and lowers the volume without stopping the track.
“Do you want it off?”
I shake my head, tears slipping down my cheeks. “No. Please.”
So we listen.
Daddy coughs during the second verse. Says that’s the one after the final chord.
When it ends, I cry without trying to hide it.
Eventually, I wipe my face and say, “My doctor wants me doing gentle semi-occluded exercises before the injection. No pushing or sustained high notes.”
“Okay.”
“I sang a little at Mama’s.”
He gives me his full attention. “How did it feel?”
“Like trespassing in my own house.”
His eyes hold mine as I reach for the guitar resting on the stand beside me before fear can convene a committee.
Daddy’s song is still in my fingers, one chord, another. I sing the six words from the verse of Starlight Blue, quiet and rough around the edges, my left fold refusing to give me the clean closure I remember.
I’ll find you underneath the starlight.
Beckett goes utterly still, his gray eyes reflecting the turbulence in my heart.
“What is it? Is it that bad?”
“No.” He clears his throat, shakes his head once, and gathers himself. “It sounds like you.”
My throat tightens for reasons the scar tissue can’t claim.
Something passes between us, quiet and unmistakable, and his hand rests on the edge of the console inches from mine, like he wants to close the distance.
I know he wants to. The knowledge sends a strange, low pull through my stomach, and I have absolutely no desire to run from it.
Beckett’s fingers curl against the wood instead. “You should stop for today,” he says, his voice lower now. “Levin said fatigue is the enemy.”
“You memorized the instructions I told you once.” He stares at me like he can’t understand why I’d think otherwise. “Most people don’t memorize things I tell them.”
His expression softens. “I do.”
My heart gives one hard, traitorous beat.
∞∞∞
When I return to Green Hills in the evening, two Mercer Records envelopes sit on the counter because Dean collected my mail from the house and dropped it off while I was out.
He and Monica haven’t gone back to Savannah yet, claiming their hotel stay is a “mini honeymoon” now that Lily and Owen are with Mama. In reality, they’re keeping close to make sure I’m okay, which is exactly what my family does when one of us is falling apart.
There’s also a grocery haul spread across the counter, enough to survive nuclear winter, and a handwritten note from Monica.
Monica: Dean thinks one woman requires four loaves of bread. I’ve stopped correcting him.
The first envelope contains routine insurance documents; the second carries the preliminary forensic findings for Friday’s board session. I read it standing barefoot in my new kitchen, golden sunset light cutting through the blinds.
Daniel Price’s payments are confirmed. The amended schedule was added after my signature, and Mercer’s credit facility relied on administration income from my catalogue.
I reach a paragraph I have to read twice.
Grant personally authorized a separate bonus pool in the year after my injury, paid through Mercer Publishing and tied to revenue targets achieved partly through songs on the disputed schedule. He received just over six hundred thousand dollars.
My songs helped trigger the bonus. Grant approved the schedule that put them inside Mercer. Six hundred thousand dollars flowed back to him when the revenue hit the threshold.
It’s the sort of circular obscenity lawyers adore because no one has to call it theft for the arithmetic to become devastating. At this point, I’m out of shocks to give.
I look around the townhouse washed in honeyed evening light, at Daddy’s guitar by the window, my medical folder on the table, my name alone on the lease, and think about the possibility of my voice returning.
I smile.
My life might be a mess, but every piece of it belongs to me.