Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
CADE
The empty spot at the bar stays empty through the first chorus.
I don't look at it. That's a lie. I look at it every time my left hand slides down the neck, every time the neon sign over Hal's good whiskey flickers blue against the bottles, and every time somebody laughs near the end of the bar.
My body forgets itself long enough to think, Emmy.
It's Saturday night, and the Whippoorwill is full enough that the front windows fog at the corners.
Boots scuff the old floor, and beer sweats through napkins.
Hal moves behind the bar with his towel over one shoulder, his face set in the cranky concentration of a man pretending he hasn't been saved.
Cy is in the back, half in shadow, his steel case propped against the wall.
He hasn't played with me tonight. He said this set was mine to carry. So I carry it.
My fingers ache. My voice is rough. I'm halfway through a song I wrote when I was twenty-six and stupid enough to believe wanting a thing hard made me worthy of keeping it. The town knows the words better now. They sing low with me, not loud, not trying to turn the room into an arena.
The Whip doesn't do arenas. The Whip does sticky floors, bad wiring, and a stage barely tall enough to call itself one. It does Hal's pickled eggs, the old neon bird over the bar, and the place near the end where Emmy Sutton once leaned on her elbow and watched a broke musician sing.
That spot is empty. It's been empty every weekend. Sometimes somebody drifts into it, orders a drink, and then moves away without anyone saying a word. I don't know if Harmony Ridge has made a church out of that little stretch of wood or if I have. Either way, I play to it.
I'm playing to it when the door opens. Cold air slides across the room. A few heads turn first, irritated by the draft. Then the room changes. Not loud, not dramatic, just a shift. It's like every person inside the Whip takes the same breath and decides not to let it out too fast.
My thumb misses the string. The note goes wrong.
Emmy stands just inside the door.
For one second, my mind refuses to make sense of her there and gives me pieces instead: dark hair loose around her shoulders; black sweater, soft and long; one hand curled at the strap of her purse.
Her face is pale from the cold, or from courage, or from whatever it cost her to put her hand on that door and walk into a room where half this town knows exactly what I've been begging for without words.
She's here. My heart hits once, hard enough to make the guitar shift against my chest. She's here.
The empty spot at the bar isn't empty anymore because Emmy crosses the room and takes it.
No one stops her. No one greets her too loudly.
Mabel Tandy turns on her stool and then turns right back around, blinking fast. Pop Dobbs, near the wall, lowers his chin like he's giving somebody privacy inside a crowd.
Hal reaches for a glass, misses it, and wipes at his eyes with the towel like the thing offended him.
Cy doesn't move. He just watches me, steady and quiet, from the back.
Emmy's gaze lifts to mine. The setlist on the floor might as well be a grocery receipt in another language.
I stop playing. The last chord fades into the rafters. Nobody claps. Nobody coughs. The Whip holds still around us, all ninety people doing the impossible kindness of being present and looking away at the same time.
I step closer to the mic. My mouth is dry. "Need to change this one," I say, my voice coming out low and frayed. A couple people shift. Hal turns his back and starts rearranging bottles that don't need arranging.
I look down at my guitar because if I keep looking at her, I might walk off this stage before the song has a chance to do what I've never managed with speech.
My fingers find the old progression by muscle memory.
Not one of the new songs. Not the ones the internet tore apart and put back together.
Not the apology tracks with my heart on my sleeve.
This one is older. From before the awards, before Melody, and before Duke learned how to turn chemistry into a campaign while I let him.
It's the first song I sang after Emmy interviewed me at WHLR.
She remembers. I see it on her face. Her hand tightens around the purse strap, and her mouth parts like the room has pushed air into her too quickly.
I sing it badly at first. Not pitch. Pitch is easy and has never been the problem.
I sing it badly because my throat keeps trying to close around her name, and the song doesn't have her name in it, not anywhere anyone else can hear.
It has the rain from that night, the cheap station coffee, the motel carpet, and the way she looked at me over the mic and told me to try again.
She stands at the bar and listens, not forgiving, not softened into something easy.
Her face still carries the arena, the kitchen, the recording, and the months I let strangers hold her pain up to the light.
She looks tired in a way fame never photographed properly.
She looks beautiful, which isn't useful and isn't the point, but my heart notices anyway.
My heart has never been disciplined where Emmy is concerned.
When the song ends, I don't let the room clap. I move straight into the next: our first slow-dance song.
That old jukebox used to play it with a warble in the second verse, back when I had seventy-three dollars in checking and Emmy still let me put my hand at her waist like I had any business touching something that precious.
I don't sing the lyrics. I hum the melody and let the guitar speak where words would make the room too crowded.
Emmy looks down. Her free hand drifts, just for a second, to the front of her sweater.
Something in me catches. The sweater hangs loose, but not loose enough.
Or maybe I know her body too well. Maybe I know her silhouette even after months of distance, punishment, and repair that may never be enough.
There's a softness there I don't remember, a carefulness in how she stands, and a guarded way she holds herself, as if some part of her is tender and not meant for the room.
My fingers stumble again. I don't understand what I'm seeing. I only know that my chest goes tight with a fear I can't name, and Emmy's hand drops as soon as my eyes catch there. She squares her shoulders.
I look away first. For once in my life, I learn quickly enough.
The next song is one of the love letters, the raw one. The one I recorded in the cabin with my hands split open from porch boards, the one Duke called career suicide and Cy called finally telling the truth.
I don't sing it like a man trying to be believed. I sing it because she's standing in the Whippoorwill, in the room where we began, and I'd sing it if she turned around and walked out before the bridge.
The town disappears by degrees. Not really.
I can still hear the glasses, the old air unit, and someone's quiet sniff near the wall.
But the room narrows to Emmy's eyes and the old neon laying blue across her cheek.
She looks at me like she's standing at the edge of something she doesn't trust, as if her heart has stepped forward without permission and the rest of her is deciding whether to follow it.
I finish with the song I never released.
The first line comes out almost too quiet for the mic to catch.
It's a song about a man who built four houses and missed the home; a song about marble floors and a dogwood tree; a song about a woman whose voice came through midnight radio and taught him how to tell the truth.
By the last chorus, my eyes burn so hard the lights blur. I don't close them. I've spent too much of this marriage not looking where I should.
The final chord rings out. For a moment, nobody moves. Then the applause comes, soft at first, then fuller. Not the roar I used to chase. Something warmer, with mercy in it.
I slide the guitar strap over my head and set the Martin in its stand with both hands. My palms are damp and my knees feel untrustworthy.
I step off the stage. The crowd parts without making a show of it. A shoulder turns, a chair scrapes back, and someone looks down into their drink like beer has suddenly gotten fascinating.
Emmy waits at the end of the bar. Up close, she's even more real: tired eyes, brave chin, one hand tucked into the fold of her sweater.
All the grand gestures are behind me. The house, the songs, this room, and every public brick I could lay down without asking her to step over it. Now there's only me: a man in a dive bar with sore hands, a wrecked voice, and nothing left to offer but the truth.
I stop in front of her. "Emmy," I say.
Her eyes shine, but they don't break. She looks around the room once, then back at me. "Can we go somewhere else?"
I can barely get enough air to nod.