Chapter 4
LEAH
When I got home, Asher was still singing on the television.
The living room was dark. Red stage flames reflected off the floor-to-ceiling windows, cutting my reflection into alternating light and shadow.
Sabrina stood beside him singing harmonies, the camera pushing slowly in from the space between them.
A caption scrolled across the bottom of the screen: Asher Vale and His New Creative Muse Sabrina Knox Close the Night with “Still Burning”.
I picked up the remote and turned off the sound.
The house went quiet, leaving only the low hum of the refrigerator.
Asher was still mouthing words in silence, the audience still screaming in silence.
The camera cut to Sabrina; she was looking at him with a smile, as though every line of that song had happened between them.
I turned off the television and set my car keys on the entryway cabinet.
I wasn’t sure how much time I had. There were interviews and photo calls after the encore—Asher couldn’t be back for at least an hour, and he might spend another night at a hotel near the venue. He’d said he would come home after the show, but he’d also said yesterday he’d be home by seven.
The study was at the end of the upstairs hallway.
When I pushed the door open, the motion-sensor light came on and lit up the archive boxes along the wall—early show ticket stubs, handwritten set lists, and the notebooks, tapes, and hard drives still kept at home.
Pressed under the leftmost stack were repair receipts from the old van, back when we’d argue for half an hour over a tank of gas.
The older paper materials and original media were stored with the back catalog in the external archive; Evan still had review access.
I stood in the doorway and, for the first time, looked at this room as something that needed to be divided. The master recordings that had already been released belonged to existing agreements, and the demos formally authorized to Asher stayed as they were. I didn’t delete them.
Unfinished lyrics, private recordings, and songs I had never authorized—those I put in a separate column.
I pulled two equipment cases out from under the cabinet and packed the notebooks still in the study.
They spanned different years: some barely filled, some coffee-stained, the paper edges rippled into waves.
The black clothbound notebook went in on top.
Asher used to find the song he wanted by the color of the cover.
He’d stand in the doorway and say, Leah, where’s the blue one?
Or: do you still remember that chorus from last winter?
I always remembered. I set the last notebook in the case, leaving pale rectangular marks on the shelf, then added the private materials from the external archive to a freeze list. The things I wasn’t carrying out by hand were no longer his by default.
Next were the hard drives. Everything already released and formally delivered stayed in place; the working drives for private recordings and unfinished work I took with me; the original materials in the external archive I froze at the same time.
I cross-referenced the existing catalog to confirm I hadn’t deleted any file that had already been delivered, and I didn’t touch access to the released versions.
Asher’s production team had direct access to the shared drive—pulling voice memos, unfinished choruses, a line of lyrics that hadn’t found a home yet.
Sometimes I’d wake up in the morning and a melody I’d hummed the night before had already been copied into a new project.
Asher would kiss my forehead at the coffee table and say he knew I wouldn’t let him stay stuck for long.
I used to take that as intimacy. Now I removed the team’s permissions and left only my own account and Evan Reed’s archive access. The page threw up a warning about disconnecting collaborators.
I clicked confirm. I recognized every one of those profile pictures—I’d opened the door for each of them, one by one. Now they disappeared from the shared list together.
My phone vibrated on the desk. Asher’s name lit up. I didn’t answer. After the call stopped ringing, the first message came through immediately.
Where are you?
The second appeared half a minute later.
Leah, tell me you’re safe.
My hand stilled over the keyboard. Thirteen years of reflex pushed me to pick up the phone—to tell him I was already home, that the door was locked, that he didn’t need to lose focus before a media interview.
I turned the phone face-down and kept exporting the catalog list. The progress bar didn’t stop for his interview.
When the progress bar reached halfway, he called again. This time he left a voicemail. I didn’t play it. I saved the verified list to an encrypted folder and copied a second version to my own hard drive.
At 12:40 a.m., I called Evan.
He picked up quickly, his voice thick with sleep. “Leah?”
“Sorry to call this late.”
“I watched the release event.” His voice grew more alert. “Are you all right?”
“I need you to suspend all new pulls on unreleased materials. Starting tonight, anyone who wants to extract files from the old archive has to get my written confirmation first.”
Two seconds of silence on the other end. “Including Asher?”
“Especially Asher.”
Evan didn’t ask if I was serious. He’d recorded our first demo when Asher and I couldn’t afford proper studio headphones. He knew which melody had come out of whose mouth first, and he knew why my name had stayed out of the credits all these years.
“I’m freezing access now,” he said. “What about the released catalog?”
“Don’t touch it. Preserve the current state and keep the access records. We may need to review them later.”
“Understood.”
“Evan.” I stopped him. “If Asher asks, just tell him the permissions are suspended. Don’t explain it for me.”
“I won’t.”
After I hung up, I dialed the after-hours line for a family law firm.
The automated prompt asked me to leave a message.
I gave my name and said three things: I wanted to retain separate counsel; I wanted to initiate divorce proceedings; I would be at the office to sign the retainer at the earliest available time in the morning.
When I said the word “divorce,” I didn’t cry.
I just looked at the wedding photo beside the computer. It was taken on the steps of city hall—I was wearing a forty-dollar white dress, and Asher’s suit sleeves were a little too long. He was smiling like what he’d gotten that day wasn’t a marriage certificate but the whole world.
Nine years later, he really did get the whole world.
And then, in front of the whole world, he called me a fan.
I turned the wedding photo face-down on the desk.
The bedroom was harder to divide than the study.
Clothes, documents, and medication were straightforward; the two toothbrushes side by side at the sink made me stand there for a long time.
Asher’s black dress shirt was still draped over the chair—I’d taken it out of the dryer last night.
The sheets hadn’t been changed; the creases from that morning were still there.
Less than twenty-four hours ago, he had held me in this room and said he’d missed me.
The creases were still in the sheets, and the songwriting credit was still on the stage. Both were real. Love hadn’t stopped him from keeping me hidden, from continuing to use what I made, from filling the gap with compensation afterward.
I took my own clothes and documents and didn’t touch anything of his. At the back of a drawer was a small voice recorder holding the private voice memos I’d recorded over the years. I ejected the memory card and put it in my bag, then left the empty recorder where it was.
At 1:20 a.m., two equipment cases and one rolling suitcase were loaded into the back of the car.
My phone showed seven missed calls.
The most recent message read:
I’m on my way home. Don’t go.
I read it and didn’t reply. Before I left, I went back to the study one last time and opened the shared drive to confirm the permissions. A gray lock icon had appeared next to every unreleased file; the team accounts could no longer get in.
I shut down the computer.
By the time the security system alerted me that someone was approaching the front door, I was already pulling out from the other side of the garage.
In the rearview mirror, the porch light flashed once at the corner and was quickly swallowed by tree shadows.
I didn’t see Asher’s car, but I knew we might be only one block apart.
If I stopped, he would find me. He would ask for five minutes.
He would say every decision made tonight could still be undone.
He would use the voice I knew best to tell me we shouldn’t destroy nine years of marriage while our emotions were running this high.
So I didn’t stop.
The clerk at the hotel desk didn’t recognize me.
She checked my ID, handed me a key card, and told me breakfast started at six-thirty.
The room was on the twelfth floor, and the neatly made bed showed no sign that anyone had slept in it.
I set the black notebook on the nightstand, pushed the equipment cases against the wall, and played Asher’s voicemail for the first time.
“Leah, where are you? I’m home. Your things are gone.”
In the background I could hear his quick footsteps and the sound of cabinet doors being pulled open.
“Call me back. I know you’re angry, I know I messed up, but you can’t just disappear like this. At least tell me you’re safe.”
He paused for a few seconds, his breath close to the mic.
“Also—why can’t I get into the shared drive? Those unfinished demos need to be backed up tomorrow. Don’t delete anything, okay? We can talk, but restore the permissions first.”
The voicemail ended.
I restarted the voicemail and listened again. “Safe” came first. The shared drive and the demos came last.
I didn’t reply.
At eight o’clock the next morning, I signed the retainer at the lawyer’s office.
The attorney didn’t ask me to tell the full story of the marriage—only to confirm which works were solely mine, which had been authorized, and which access had to stop immediately.
My lawyer sent a one-page cease-use and divorce-contact notice simultaneously to Asher, his management team, and his legal counsel: no use of any unreleased works; all further contact limited to divorce proceedings and separation of the existing catalog.
After the documents went through, I went back to the hotel to get my car.
The morning rush had just cleared. I entered the address of the seaside town into the GPS—the place where we’d lived for two years before anyone knew our names, far enough from here without being far enough to feel like running.
The GPS estimated three hours and forty-seven minutes; the road ahead was clear.
Asher’s call came in again. I watched the screen light up for a few seconds, then pressed the power button.
His last voicemail sat unplayed.
I turned onto the highway out of the city and didn’t look back.