Chapter 33 #2
Laurel: Better closure. No pain on the test sounds. Too swollen to know much else. Voice rest until tomorrow.
Beckett: Sounds like useful information.
Beckett: And since you can’t talk, this may be the safest our relationship has ever been.
Asshole.
I send him a picture of my middle finger.
Beckett: Recovery looks promising.
My laugh makes no sound, just shoulders shaking and my mouth open around air, and for some reason the silence makes it feel more private. Like the joke belongs entirely inside this hotel room and the phone in my hand.
Grant’s name fills the screen. My stomach pulls tight, my shoulders lock, and the smile disappears. I ignore all three calls until a text replaces the missed-call notification.
Grant: Mom won’t tell me where you are. Did you have the procedure?
Knowing Celia kept her promise eases something in me.
Grant: Laurel, please. I know you don’t owe me anything. I just need to know you’re okay.
He sounds like the man who slept in hospital chairs, memorized my medications, and learned to read my face before I admitted I was scared; not the asshole who paid Daniel to interfere with my career, stole my song, and fucked Sloane because jealousy, resentment, entitlement—whatever poison he kept feeding himself—gave him permission.
The problem has never been finding a monster and discovering Grant underneath; he has always been in there.
I type an answer, delete it, type another, delete that too. A third gets as far as his name before I erase the whole fucking thing.
My medical information belongs to me now. So does the decision to share it. Giving him one piece because I choose to is not the same as letting him reach into my life and take whatever he still believes marriage entitles him to.
Laurel: The trial injection is done. I’m safe.
Grant: Did it work?
I turn the phone facedown.
That’s as much as he gets.
∞∞∞
Nashville feels different when I get back, even though the airport is still overrun by bachelorette parties in matching boots they’ll regret buying, September is finally starting to take the teeth out of the heat, and Nora still parks at passenger pickup like traffic laws were drafted as suggestions for less interesting people.
Outside, the air carries the first hint of fall beneath all the leftover summer—less humidity, a cooler breeze moving through the pickup lane, a few dry leaves skittering across the pavement like the city has finally remembered another season exists.
Nora takes one look at me, bursts into tears, swears at herself for crying, and immediately demands I say something.
“You look like absolute shit.”
We both freeze.
My voice isn’t my old voice. I know it before the final syllable leaves my mouth. It’s fuller than it was a week ago, less airy through the center, but the texture remains. The scar didn’t disappear because Dr. Levin put temporary filler beside it; nothing magical happened in Boston.
More importantly, the sentence doesn’t hurt.
I don’t have to push the sound uphill. I don’t have to force the last word out or brace myself halfway through it.
It just comes.
Nora covers her mouth.
“Don’t you dare.”
A wounded-animal noise escapes her. “You sound—”
“Do not say normal.”
“I was going to say bitchy.”
She hugs me so carefully I suspect Mama sent diagrams, and I melt into her arms, grateful in a way I don’t have words for that I got her back. That whatever we broke between us wasn’t permanent.
The next few days become an experiment conducted inside ordinary life. Jenna records another baseline and comes dangerously close to vibrating out of her chair from professional satisfaction, even as she insists we stay conservative.
Closure is better. I can hold notes longer before the air starts leaking out. Speaking takes less effort. My pitch range only expands a little, but parts of my middle register stop punishing me almost the second I use them.
Naturally, Jenna stops me right when I want another pass.
“One more.”
“No.”
“I feel fine.”
“Wonderful. Stop. Your body isn’t an argument you need to win, Laurel.”
Unfortunately, I recognize myself in her words.
Grant always wants one more thing because stopping feels too much like losing, another deal, another percentage point, another way around no. I’ve got my own version of the same impulse; mine just learned prettier names like discipline, perseverance and resilience.
I stop pushing.
At home, I eat dinner on the floor beside Nora as she dismantles half a chorus we finished last week, renewed friendship having restored her God-given ability to murder perfectly serviceable lyrics and call it editing.
Mama finally returns to Savannah after spending two days reorganizing my kitchen and leaving behind enough frozen food to sustain a small militia.
Dean and Monica head home too, but not until Dean makes me promise twice that security has Sloane’s photograph, vehicle information and enough instructions to repel a minor invasion.
Caroline calls and cries so hard at the sound of my voice that five minutes later we’re discussing her children instead, since neither of us can survive the obvious subject without becoming unbearable.
I’d forgotten how much I missed her. She might be Grant’s sister, but she was my friend long before I decided I was done carrying her brother’s mistakes, and letting him go was never supposed to mean letting her go too.
Celia sends flowers without a card. I know they’re from her anyway. Grant spent years turning flowers into apology currency, and Celia seems to have decided removing her name makes the gesture less loaded.
My world fills up again, people returning to the spaces I left empty, and this time, I let them stay.
Grant’s world keeps getting smaller without any assistance from me.
Evelyn updates me after my appointment with Jenna, since financial disclosures do not care that my vocal fold is having a good week.
He finally produces the source-of-funds records for Russell’s shares, and the three-point-three-million-dollar cash portion brings a fresh problem with it.
Some of the money came from an investment account opened during our marriage, leaving the court with a fairly significant question: did he use marital money after the injunction took effect?