11. Chapter Eleven
Chapter Eleven
Hunter
Alow buzz came from the avocado-green refrigerator while Wendy’s voice played through two cheap speakers on the kitchen counter.
Hunter sat on the bungalow’s only barstool, one foot braced against a cabinet. An unwashed mug was near his elbow. The scarred counter pressed into his forearms. His old guitar case was under the narrow window, still closed. He hadn’t touched it since he’d moved here.
A column of unopened messages ran along the side of the laptop screen.
Attorneys listed penalties and threatened claims, and executives wanted decisions about canceled appearances, sponsor meetings, and the empty tour calendar.
Hunter had given counsel authority to handle anything that couldn’t wait, but he hadn’t answered the rest.
He’d listened to Wendy’s episode so many times that he knew where she paused to breathe.
“Relationships are lived as patterns, not isolated courtroom exhibits,” she said through the speakers. “A person can spend years waiting for one dramatic event to justify taking smaller injuries seriously.”
Hunter paused the podcast. His phone was next to the laptop. Wendy’s contact was still there. He could open a blank message, type any number of words, and send them in the void, because he knew she’d blocked him. And there was nothing he could do about it.
He ran a hand through his disheveled hair.
When Wendy spoke about cumulative harm, he heard a list of damage he could repair.
When she described a boundary, he heard a test he was passing by staying away.
When she spoke about reclaiming work, he heard proof that he should find a way to support her podcast. Every sentence became an instruction.
Every instruction became a possible road back to her.
He’d taken work Wendy created for thousands of listeners and made it another service she performed for him. Apparently, he couldn’t help himself.
Hunter dragged the progress bar to the beginning of the episode. Wendy’s opening filled the bungalow again.
“My private life became public without my consent. This podcast will not become another place where strangers consume it.”
He closed his eyes. The first times he’d heard those words, he’d thought about the leaked video, the reporters, the concert footage, and Billy’s campaign. He’d wanted to tell Wendy that he understood now and ask what she needed him to do. That would still have required her to answer.
Tonight, he listened without building a reply in his head.
Wendy explained that a boundary controlled a person’s own access, participation, or behavior.
It wasn’t a punishment just because someone else disliked the distance.
She said understanding why a person caused harm didn’t make the harm feel safe.
Hunter’s hand tightened around the edge of the counter.
He knew she’d recorded the episode for her audience.
She hadn’t spoken his name, she hadn’t referred to the song, to Serena, the Bowl, or their marriage.
He’d supplied those details because he couldn’t stand hearing his wife’s voice without making it about himself.
By the time the episode ended, Hunter felt more cramped inside the bungalow.
He noticed every ordinary sign of the life he’d chosen here: folded grocery bags next to the refrigerator, a contactless delivery receipt, one plate drying in the sink, and clothes he’d washed badly hanging from the back of a kitchen chair.
He hadn’t brought any staff with him. He’d stayed away from central Aria Springs and hadn’t announced his presence to anyone.
None of that made him good. It meant he could feed himself and follow one clear boundary.
Wendy had done both for years without expecting applause.
The anniversary had passed with his phone resting facedown. He’d remembered the rust-red truck, the rain, Wendy’s wet hair stuck to her cheek, and the kiss she’d given him in front of the raised hood. He’d wanted to send two words: I remember.
He hadn’t. The date didn’t give him the right to place his grief on his wife’s shoulders. Respecting her block and not contacting her via email or in some other way wasn’t romance or sacrifice. It was the least he could do after treating every earlier no as the start of a negotiation.
Hunter opened a fresh document. He stared at the blank page, then typed a heading.
WAYS TO APOLOGIZE
The ideas came too easily. A full-page statement in every major newspaper, a live interview with no questions approved in advance, a plain video in which he told the truth. Billboards stripped of brand logos and covered with a single sentence: Wendy, I was wrong.
He could reach millions. Every reporter in the country would ask whether Wendy had watched. Cameras would search Aria Springs for her, producers would call her podcast, and strangers would demand an answer because Hunter had created a public moment and placed her at its center again.
He imagined Wendy leaving Juniper Diner while people shoved phones in her face. He imagined a camera waiting beyond her parents’ gate. He imagined her being asked to look grateful because this time the spectacle was called an apology.
Hunter deleted the list. The empty page remained, and he changed the heading.
WHAT I CHOSE
He opened the folders his attorneys and the remaining Trace Media staff had sent him. Messages about penalties, sponsor disputes, canceled appearances, and vendor claims filled his inbox. He left them for the lawyers handling them and pulled up the Hollywood Bowl archive instead.
The first image in the raw broadcast file was a wide shot of the stage. He moved forward until he found the “Twenty Again” section and played play. Serena stepped into the light, the crowd rose, and Hunter watched himself smile at her while he sang the first line.
He remembered what the song had felt like from the stage: the band hitting exactly right, Serena meeting every phrase, seventeen thousand people sensing a moment they believed mattered. He’d felt alive enough to mistake excitement for permission.
The camera-three feed showed Wendy, then. She sat straight in her centered seat, one hand closed around the program in her lap. The shock on her face lasted less than a second before she controlled it. Hunter had seen the viral video but hadn’t watched the full raw shot until now.
Now he saw what had happened before and after the part people had shared. Wendy looked toward the stage when he sang about the empty tank. Her lips parted at the line about rain. She recognized their life before he gave the audience any reason to believe it belonged to her.
Near the end, the publicist’s low voice reached the camera microphone.
“Keep smiling. Keep it warm.”
Hunter paused the footage.
He typed: I let the production use Wendy’s reaction to prove a lie I knew was profitable.
He kept going. The onstage conversation showed Serena praising the fearless version of him she’d found.
Hunter heard himself thank Wendy for her “constant support.” The words sounded worse without the noise of the crowd.
Serena stood next to him as an artist, while Wendy received credit for maintaining the machine.
He typed: I called her supportive because I valued what she carried more openly than I valued who she was.
Next came the campaign deck. Polished slides showed duet art, tour mock-ups, documentary plans, bourbon ads, and photographs cropped close enough to make business look like desire.
One slide included Wendy’s applause. Billy had written a note across it: WIFE REACTION TESTS EXTREMELY WELL.
Hunter found his response in the meeting record: “Lose that image.” For one moment, relief moved through him.
He’d objected. But in the end, he’d signed off on the campaign anyway.
He typed: I removed one picture so I could feel protective while approving everything else.
The message history with his wife was colder. On his phone, he scrolled through their message thread.
Wendy: When will I finally hear the new collaboration?
Hunter: Tomorrow will make everything clear.
Wendy: Are you coming home tonight?
He hadn’t even answered her.
He added the tour hold, the surprise announcement, the call from Wendy he’d silenced at Canyonlight, and the morning Wendy asked whether the song was written for Serena. He remembered answering every question except the one she asked. He wrote down his exact excuse: songs weren’t sworn testimony.
Then he named what he’d done after Serena made her intentions clear. He’d returned to the boardroom and signed a contract to sell the hope he’d rejected in private.
The list grew without Billy’s name as a shield.
Serena’s name appeared only where Hunter had used her attention or allowed her belief that there could be something between them.
The cut video that had leaked all over social media came last. It had distorted one sentence, taken out of context, but Hunter had spent months making the distortion sound true.
He read the document from the top. What he saw was: vanity, entitlement, avoidance, dependence. He’d depended on Wendy to soothe him, organize him, understand him, and survive him. Then he’d called her strong as if strength meant she couldn’t be harmed.
At the top of the page, above the heading, he added one question.
What will I change if Wendy never witnesses it and never returns?
Hunter didn’t have a complete answer.
Canceling the tour stopped new damage. Shelving the master stopped him from selling Wendy’s song again.
Paying the contracted crew kept other people from carrying the immediate financial cost. Firing Billy ended one system he’d used to avoid responsibility.
Those choices mattered, but they still didn’t make him trustworthy.
He saved the document and closed the campaign files.
The bungalow was quiet except for the refrigerator and the faint traffic beyond Orchard Lane. Hunter couldn’t sleep. He wanted Wendy’s voice again, but he didn’t want to turn the comeback episode into another private lesson.
Her full podcast archive had always remained public.
He knew that because Wendy had told him more than once, usually after asking if he’d listened to an episode.
He’d always answered with a version of “later”.
After the tour slowed down, after the next launch, on the flight, at the hotel.
He’d assumed he already knew her ideas because he knew Wendy.
Listening had seemed optional when he believed access to her was permanent.
Hunter opened the archive.
Years of cover images and episode notes filled the screen. He scrolled past solo discussions, expert interviews, and listener questions. He felt a forgotten energy in the early descriptions. Wendy had asked and answered curious, difficult questions without making anyone feel foolish.
He chose an old episode featuring Lily Calder. The title was “Where Repair Lives.” He clicked because he missed the easy way Wendy laughed with her friend.
Lily’s recorded voice came first. “I still vote for a beautiful island. Warm water, linen pants, and everybody healed by Thursday.”
Wendy laughed. The sound stopped Hunter’s breath.
“That’s a vacation with worksheets,” Wendy said.
“You say that like it isn’t a business model.”
“It’s a terrible treatment model.”
Hunter paused the episode.
Wendy sounded playful and sure, nothing held back for fear that her joy might inconvenience someone. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d made her laugh that freely. Worse, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d noticed the difference.
He pressed play again.
Wendy explained that a useful retreat couldn’t depend on one beautiful weekend.
Couples often understood each other in a protected setting, then returned to the same pressures and habits at home.
She wanted a permanent place where they could come back, continue the work, and measure repair through ordinary life.
“You’ve already picked the place,” Lily said.
“I have pages.”
“Of course you have pages.”
“Vesper Hill,” Wendy said, and Hunter sat straighter.
“Outside Aria Springs. I visited when I was younger. There’s an old inn, cottages, a vineyard, a tasting room, and a stone barn.
The tasting room could become the podcast studio.
The cottages would give couples privacy without isolation.
We could use the barn for workshops and keep the walking trail for conversations that are easier side by side. ”
Her voice warmed as she described it. Lily asked about clinicians, privacy rules, return visits, and international guests. Wendy had an answer for nearly everything and excitement for the parts she still needed to learn.
She hadn’t hidden this dream.
Hunter had filed it under “later” because it didn’t serve the life he was building at that specific moment.
When the episode ended, he searched for Vesper Hill Vineyard & Inn.
The first result was a current sale prospectus.
Hunter opened it. Photographs showed weathered stucco, cracked roof tiles, boarded windows, old vines, and detached cottages scattered across the hill.
The tasting room had tall windows facing the valley.
Even neglected, it looked like the place Wendy had described.
The developer plans were attached. Most of the inn would be replaced by luxury villas. The cottages would be removed, a private spa and pool would take the tasting room’s place, and rows of old vines would be cleared for roads and parking. The sale process was near its end.
Hunter’s first impulse was simple. Buy it. He had the money. One call could stop the developer, close the sale, and place the keys in Wendy’s hand.
It would also make him the owner of her dream before she knew it was threatened. He would decide what to save, what to spend, and when she had to respond. He’d turn listening into another excuse to act on Wendy’s behalf.
Hunter took his hand away from his phone.
The question from his inventory remained at the top of his mind. What would he change if she never came back?
He opened a new search instead. He looked for ways to delay a sale without forcing ownership, preserve historic buildings without choosing their future, and create an option someone else could accept or refuse.
For once, Hunter didn’t ask how to give Wendy a finished answer. He asked how to keep the answer hers.