Chapter 5
ASHER
After Leah left, the only sounds in the house were the appliances running on their own.
The stereo could still play the songs she’d written, but the kitchen held none of the melodies she used to hum.
No pages turned at the bedside. Her slippers stopped brushing across the hardwood at the top of the stairs.
I came home in the middle of the night and heard nothing—no voice calling out that there was food in the fridge.
I listened to that voicemail again on the third day.
“At least tell me you’re safe.”
Then a brief pause.
“Also—why can’t I get into the shared drive? Those unfinished demos need to be backed up tomorrow.”
I set the phone down on the dining table. In the playback, my worry about her and my question about the demos were separated by a single pause.
The lawyer’s one-page cease-use and divorce-contact notice was sitting right beside it.
No use of any unreleased works. All further contact limited to divorce proceedings and separation of the existing catalog.
It had been delivered simultaneously to me, my management team, and legal counsel at eight o’clock on the morning Leah left the city. I’d read it that same day.
Divorce.
I’d read that word a dozen times by now, and each time something felt missing between it and nine years of marriage.
We were supposed to fight first. Supposed to slam a door, spend a night with one of us in the guest room.
Leah was supposed to tell me what she needed, and I was supposed to have a chance to agree to it.
She had told me: Don’t give Sabrina my song and then call her your muse.
I agreed. Then I signed the opposite the next day.
My phone buzzed—my manager, letting me know the car was out front.
The morning show at nine was the first national broadcast after the release event, and Sabrina and I both had to be there.
The notice was still on the dining table, but outside, the “first fan” footage was still being cut into whatever version best served the campaign.
One of the headlines read: Asher Vale’s Secretive Wife Watches His New Muse Bring Him Back to Life.
I opened it once and closed it.
“Cancel the appearance,” I told my manager.
Silence on the other end. “Are you sure?”
“Leah filed for divorce.”
“I know. Legal and I both received the same notice two days ago.”
“You already knew?”
“We knew when it was delivered.” He paused. “Which is exactly why you can’t cancel. If you go dark now, the press will tie the marriage directly to the campaign. Get through the show as planned. We’ll handle the personal situation this afternoon.”
Personal situation. Three days ago, that phrase kept Leah off camera. Now it put the show ahead of her all over again.
“I could address it on air,” I said. “Tell them she’s my wife.”
“The public knows you have a wife. The problem is you can’t suddenly reverse the release narrative. The sponsors are watching.”
A car horn sounded faintly outside the door.
I had options. I could send the car away. I could pause the press run. I could say on camera that Leah wrote the song, and I could have my lawyer relay that decision to her immediately—even if she refused to see me, at least it would be the first time I’d put the marriage ahead of the schedule.
I picked up my jacket.
“Tell the host—nothing about the divorce,” I said.
The studio had dressed the green room in the promotional colors for “Still Burning.” Red-and-black posters covered an entire wall.
My face and Sabrina’s were printed at the same size, our names joined by a flame between them.
Sabrina was already there. She was sitting at the makeup mirror, looking at her phone, the songwriting plaque on the table in front of her.
When she saw me come in, she turned the screen off.
“Leah left?”
I stopped. “Who told you?”
“Everyone knows. Your lawyers’ notice affected the next album.” She turned her chair around. “I never told you to call her a fan.”
“But you took the plaque.”
Her expression went cold. “You handed it to me. Don’t rewrite that moment as me snatching it from you just because things got hard.”
I didn’t answer. The plaque was still on the table behind her—I had put it in her hands myself. There was nothing I could say to make it into something she’d taken from me.
A crew member knocked to let us know we had five minutes. Sabrina stood and straightened her jacket. She kept her distance as she passed me. Off camera, she didn’t touch me, and she didn’t try to comfort me with the voice she’d used onstage the night before.
“Follow the rundown today,” she said. “As for your marriage—you should have kept your word before now.”
After the show opened, the host celebrated the song’s numbers, then put the duet clip from the night before on the big screen.
“The whole world is talking about your chemistry,” she said, smiling at Sabrina. “Some people are saying we’re finally seeing someone who truly understands Asher’s music.”
Sabrina smiled the way she’d rehearsed it. “We really do understand what each other needs on stage.”
The host turned to me. “There was also an unexpected appearance last night—Leah. Is she really your first fan, the one who’s been there from the very beginning, like you said?”
No one spoke in my earpiece. My manager was sitting behind the cameras, one finger pressed to his lips, reminding me not to stray from the prepared answer.
I could say she wasn’t a fan. I could say she was the person who wrote “Still Burning.”
“Leah has never liked the spotlight,” I heard myself say. “She’s a very private part of my life, and she’s always supported my music.”
The host’s expression settled into satisfaction. “So she understands why fans are excited about the creative connection between you and Sabrina?”
My throat tightened.
“She understands that this work requires promotion.”
The host smiled. The show moved on. She turned to Sabrina and asked what it felt like the first time she heard the chorus Asher had written for her. Sabrina paused half a second, then said the song meant a great deal to her.
I didn’t correct it. When the commercial break started, I pulled out my earpiece immediately. No reply from Leah on my phone—only a confirmation forwarded from my lawyer: she was declining personal contact, and the freeze on unreleased works was effective immediately.
My manager came over and lowered his voice. “You handled that well.”
I looked at him. “My wife is divorcing me.”
“Which is exactly why you need to hold things together out there.”
And I actually nodded.
By the time I got back to the studio it was afternoon. The label executive, two producers, and an outside songwriter were already waiting. The progress board on the wall called for a demo of the next single in ten days: loss, winning it back, but nothing that sounded like a marriage statement.
I worked through the chord progression quickly.
The producers laid down the drum track. Sabrina settled on the harmonies.
The outside songwriter wrote fire / home / empty / return on the whiteboard.
Every component needed to build a song was in the room.
I just didn’t know what I wanted them to say.
In the past I would have sent this kind of silence to Leah. She would ask me what I was actually afraid of losing. The next day she’d hand back a line so precise it felt like it had always been mine. I opened my phone and tapped her name.
The lawyer’s notice sat above the text field. I didn’t send anything. Instead I had my assistant submit a new access request for the shared drive. A few seconds later the page returned a single red line: Access denied by owner.
“Let’s take ten,” I said.
Everyone filed out of the control room. Sabrina was the last to stand.
She had her phone in her hand and didn’t ask whether I needed company, didn’t move closer.
When the glass door closed, I sat down alone at the computer and opened a new lyrics document.
The cursor blinked in the upper left corner of a blank page.
I knew how to write chords, guitar parts, every vocal layer.
I knew how to build a chorus that put twenty thousand hands in the air at once.
But I sat there staring at the blank page and thought only of the wedding photo Leah had turned facedown, the half of the closet she’d emptied, and the narrative I had maintained again that morning.
Ten minutes passed. I had written only the title.
My phone lit up on the desk. Not Leah.
Sabrina had posted to social media. The photo was from last night’s stage—the two of us facing each other across the flame. She’d written: The next chapter has just begun.
I looked back at the screen. Below the title, the page was still blank.