Chapter 6
LEAH
On my twelfth morning in the seaside town, my phone pulled me back into Asher’s story.
A news alert flashed across the screen: Asher Vale’s Mysterious Wife Leaves Los Angeles After “First Fan” Moment.
The photo was the spotlight from the release night, the one that hadn’t quite reached me.
I was standing at the edge of the stage, only half my face in focus; in the distance, Asher and Sabrina were ringed by flame effects at the center, like the two people the photo was actually about.
The article didn’t know where I’d gone, or why I’d left. It called me “the wife who has long supported Asher and rarely appeared in public,” and speculated that I might be struggling with the sudden attention surrounding my husband and his young collaborator.
Nowhere did it mention the word “songwriter.” I turned off news alerts and left my phone on the kitchen counter.
The apartment was only slightly larger than a hotel room—one bedroom, a small table by the window, and a blue sofa the landlord had left in the living room.
The view outside wasn’t the ocean but the back wall of a laundromat and a narrow alley.
At seven in the morning, the coffee shop downstairs would start grinding beans; after nine, there were always dog walkers stopping to chat at the corner.
There was no security system here to tell me when someone approached the front door, and no room dedicated to holding thirteen years of one man’s career.
Two equipment cases were still propped against the bedroom wall.
One was locked and held the seven notebooks I’d taken the night I left, the black clothbound notebook sitting on top; the other held private voice memos and my current working drive, labeled LEAH PRIVATE, WORKING, UNFINISHED.
The remaining twenty-one notebooks and the original archive hard drives were still in controlled external storage, but the retrieval access had been frozen—any extraction required my written confirmation first. I hadn’t rushed to unpack what was in the cases.
For the past two weeks, I’d done only a few practical things each day: signed the lease, bought sheets, confirmed the divorce paperwork with my lawyer, and picked out groceries in quantities one person could actually finish.
On my first shopping trip, I still picked up the oat milk Asher always drank. I didn’t notice until I reached the register, so I put it back.
My lawyer sent a draft statement that morning. The media had called the firm three times, hoping I would respond to the “first fan” moment and to the creative soulmate campaign around Asher and Sabrina. The shortest version was a single sentence:
Leah Morgan is no longer involved in Asher Vale’s creative work.
I read it twice, deleted “for the time being” from the first draft, and approved it for release.
I didn’t add anything about the authorship dispute over “Still Burning,” and I didn’t leave any opening for a return date. The statement ended after the words “is no longer involved in Asher Vale’s creative work.”
At eleven, I walked to the community arts center.
It was a renovated old library, its exterior walls bleached by the sea wind, with handwritten flyers for children’s pottery classes and a weekend choir taped beside the entrance.
The director, Marisol, showed me around a small upstairs classroom: one out-of-tune upright piano, twelve mismatched chairs, and a whiteboard that never came fully clean.
“Our songwriting instructor moved up north on short notice,” she said. “Six-week course, starting next week. Most of the students are adults, with a few high schoolers who just started a band. The pay isn’t much.”
“I know.”
“Have you taught before?”
“Not formally.”
She looked over the résumé I’d handed her. There was no photo of Asher on it, no mention of “rock star’s wife.” I had listed thirteen years of songwriting, demo production, and lyric editing, along with a note about a small number of commercial projects I couldn’t list publicly.
Marisol’s finger stopped at the last line. “It says here you can provide work samples but not public release records.”
“That’s right.”
“Can I ask why?”
I used to say I preferred working behind the scenes. I used to say a family didn’t need two people standing in the spotlight. I’d given those answers so many times they had started to sound like facts.
“Because the public songwriting credits on those works aren’t accurate,” I said.
Marisol didn’t press further. She slid the course registration form across the table. “So what name would you like listed here?”
At the top of the form was a field: INSTRUCTOR. I picked up the pen.
On every formal music document from the past, Asher Vale had always appeared before me.
Sometimes my name was tucked into an internal note; sometimes all that remained was my royalty share, deposited regularly into my bank account.
This piece of paper was just an ordinary course roster.
It wouldn’t generate news, and it wouldn’t change anything on any old record.
I still paused for a second before writing, and then I wrote: Leah Morgan.
“See you Tuesday,” Marisol said.
For the first time, I handed back the signed form without explaining the relationship between Morgan and Vale.
Before I left the classroom, a woman carrying a guitar case stopped me in the doorway. Her name was Tess Rowan. She performed on the small downstairs stage twice a month and planned to sit in on the new course. When Marisol had introduced me, she’d given only the new instructor’s name.
“Would you listen to something?” Tess asked. “I can never finish the bridge.”
She played it for me in the empty classroom.
The melody was simple; the lyrics were about a window that kept blowing open in the sea wind.
The first two verses stayed in the room, but the bridge suddenly shifted to someone who had left—as if she was afraid that writing only about herself wouldn’t be enough to matter.
“It’s not the bridge,” I said. “You switched the main character in the last section.”
Tess looked back over the lyrics. “So I should cut that person?”
“Not necessarily. First decide what this song actually wants to hold onto. That person, or the window?”
She leaned against the piano and thought for a long time, then crossed out four lines on the draft. “The window. The person already left. The window will keep opening.”
We spent an hour rewriting the lyrics. I didn’t take over her story—I just kept bringing the line she kept avoiding back to the center.
When we finished, Tess stopped the voice memo on her phone and asked in a matter-of-fact voice, “When I file the performance paperwork, who goes down as songwriter?”
In the past I would have said just her. It was a small venue, after all. My name didn’t mean anything, after all. I’d only changed a few lines, after all.
I looked at the second verse and the bridge on the page, which we’d almost completely rewritten together. “Tess Rowan and Leah Morgan. The melody is yours; we wrote the lyrics together.”
“Okay.” She filled in both names on the form without asking whether I was sure.
Once the ink was on the page, the conversation was over. No one asked whether putting down both names would ruin a story that was easier to sell.
That afternoon, Evan called.
“I saw the statement,” he said. “So before I reached out, I did a preliminary inventory of the archive.”
I walked to the back door of the arts center. Sea wind cut through the gap between the two buildings, sending the flag rope in the parking lot clanging steadily against its metal pole. “What did you find?”
“More tangled than we thought. Thirteen years of notebooks, voice memos, formal demos, and master recordings have all been sitting in the same directory structure. Access can be frozen, but ownership can’t be settled by folder names.”
“How much needs to be reviewed?”
“The twelve core released works, definitely. And a batch of unreleased material.” Evan paused. “One of them is a solo demo of yours, with the filename marked private. Last month it was added to the listening list for Asher’s next album.”
I tightened my grip on the phone. “Which one?”
He said the filename.
I had never played Asher the complete version of that song. I recorded it in the first winter after my mother died and sent it only to Evan as a private backup. Asher knew the melody existed, but he didn’t know the final verse’s lyrics.
“Who copied it?”
“The access log only shows a project assistant account. The file may simply have been swept up when old materials were organized in bulk—that doesn’t mean anyone played it. But it’s been scheduled for next week’s album listening session.”
I closed my eyes. The flagpole rope kept striking, one beat at a time.
“Freeze that file immediately,” I said. “No playback, no copying, no adaptation.”
“I can pull it from the listening list now, but the lawyers say some files in the archive aren’t marked private clearly enough to establish a complete classification. We’ll need to confirm things item by item. Ideally you and Asher would both be present for a few of the necessary review sessions.”
“I’m not going back to help him organize an album.”
“That’s not what this is.” Evan’s tone didn’t shift. “This is separating your work from his project. I’m only verifying recording and file origins—not discussing the marriage.”
I looked through the classroom window at the course registration form I’d just signed. Leah Morgan at the top, black ink already dry.
“Handle most of it in writing,” I said. “Send me a list in advance of anything that needs my confirmation. Set a fixed time for each session, and I can end it whenever I need to.”
“That works.”
“Asher can’t use the review to discuss new songs, and he can’t turn it into a private meeting.”
“I’ll put that in the terms.”
Before the call ended, Evan confirmed once more that playback of the private demo had been blocked.
But pulling it from the listening list alone wasn’t enough.
Without a formal review to establish ownership, it could still be treated as usable old material from the marriage in the next round of organization.
I went back into the classroom and picked up my copy of the course registration form.
Twelve career-making songs were waiting to be reviewed again.
One song I had never intended for Asher had already been placed on his album listening list. Leaving Los Angeles had not automatically separated the past.
This time, I was going to draw every boundary myself.