Chapter 7 #2
He wanted Laurel’s work. Whether he wanted anything more personal, I never asked; the distinction wouldn’t have made me like him any better. Men don’t look at another man’s wife the way Beckett looked at mine because they admire her chord structure.
Laurel knew he believed in her, and she knew I thought his first offer was garbage.
On that much, I told her the truth. The advance was low, the three-album option restrictive, and Vale kept too much control over her masters.
I told her we could build something better ourselves, and at twenty-eight, Laurel still believed my ambition and hers were the same animal.
Six weeks later, Beckett sent revised terms during Laurel’s trip to Savannah: three hundred and fifty thousand dollars upfront, the same three-record commitment with her masters reverting after seven years, her own publishing imprint under Vale House, approval over producers, singles, and image, even language preserving her right to keep writing for my records if she chose.
It was the kind of contract artists spend years fighting toward. Above the attachment, Beckett had written: Stop making her smaller so you can feel bigger.
I read it in a tour-bus bunk somewhere outside Dallas.
My second album was four songs short; three of the strongest tracks on my first had begun in Laurel’s notebooks.
Radio had finally moved me into prime rotation, the next run of dates was booked, and Mercer Records was still a name I kept saying aloud as if repetition might turn it into a company.
Beckett’s revision should’ve gone straight to Laurel.
Instead, I sat there cataloguing every reason she shouldn’t see it.
He wanted her catalogue. He wanted her away from me. She hated Los Angeles. We were building something together. I could give her a better future than Vale House could. By the time I closed the attachment, I had dressed fear up as foresight and convinced myself I was protecting our marriage.
I answered from the management account Laurel and I both used and told Beckett she had reviewed the revised terms and declined.
She hadn’t.
He wrote back asking to hear the decision from her directly, so I called him before he could reach her another way and told him my wife had made her choice.
He said he wanted Laurel to tell him herself.
I told him she wouldn’t. His office tried again a few days later, requesting a direct conversation with her, and I made certain the request never reached her.
Then I deleted the correspondence and went back to work.
Four months later, my album went number one.
Three years after that, Laurel damaged her voice on tour, and Vale House came back with something bigger: no recording obligation, no touring, nothing dependent on whether she could ever stand behind a microphone again.
They wanted to build a publishing imprint around her catalogue, give her writers to sign and develop, put her name on the company, and let her keep a majority stake.
That offer never reached her either.
By then, Mercer Records wasn’t a name scribbled across business plans and tour-bus notebooks. It was real. I had the money, the leverage, the staff, the building, all the things I had once used fear of losing to justify what I’d done the first time.
I did it again anyway.
Haven’t thought about either offer in years.
Blatant lie.
I think about it every time Vale House beats Mercer Records on an acquisition, every time Beckett’s name appears in Billboard, every time Laurel tells someone she chose to step back before the injury because my career had momentum and one of us needed to be practical.
I let her say it. I leave the second offer buried.
Let her believe she made the choice herself.
After long enough, silence starts doing the work of a lie without requiring you to open your mouth.
∞∞∞
I make it out of dinner before the steaks ever reach the table. Mom calls after me that Warren ordered coconut cake, and I throw over my shoulder that she can take the goddamn thing home.
By the time I pull into our driveway at 9:14, Laurel’s car is gone.
The house is dark save for the lamp beside the piano, the one she insists on leaving on whenever we travel because she swears a single warm light makes the place look occupied and therefore less appealing to burglars.
She once spent fifteen minutes explaining the logic to me, shifting the lamp three inches to the left before declaring, “If we’re going to fake human presence, we might as well do it beautifully. ”
“Laurel?!”
Nothing.
I check the kitchen first. Her mug from this morning is still beside the sink, a faint crescent of coffee dried along the bottom.
Two anniversary cards sit unopened on the island, their envelopes untouched.
The florist delivered white gardenias earlier, part of the standing order I’ve had for eleven years.
That’s how I remember our anniversary without technically remembering it at all.
The flowers arrived because I set them to arrive every year, on the same date, without having to think about why.
Laurel arranged them in the blue vase before leaving for her appointment, trimming the stems with those little silver scissors she keeps in the junk drawer.
Christ. I take the stairs two at a time.
Her clothes are still in the closet. Shoes lined beneath the hanging dresses.
Her jewelry case sits closed on the dresser, and our wedding photograph remains exactly where it has always been, both of us smiling into a permanent future.
Relief hits so hard I have to sit on the edge of the bed.
She hasn’t left.
Where the hell is she then?
When I get to my feet, I notice the space beside her bookshelf is empty. Laurel’s Martin is gone. So is the battered black case she hasn’t opened in four years. I cross to her desk and pull open the top drawer.
Empty.
The yellow notebooks that used to fill it from front to back are gone including the backup drives, the fireproof document box, her passport, her birth certificate, and the folder containing every contract with her signature on it.
My stomach drops.
I walk into the bathroom. Her toothbrush is still in its holder.
Makeup lines the vanity. Perfume sits beside the sink.
Shampoo, conditioner, the ridiculous little face roller she swears does something miraculous to her skin.
All the ordinary evidence of a woman who intends to wake up here tomorrow.
My phone vibrates in my hand. Laurel. At last, she’s finally come to her senses.
I open the message so fast my grip slips, and I nearly drop the phone.
Laurel: Why did you tell Beckett Vale I rejected an offer I never saw?
I stare at it until the letters blur.
Laurel: Don’t answer yet. I want to see how many lies I can find before you tell me which ones count.