Chapter 29
LAUREL
“Grant may have borrowed eight-point-four million dollars in violation of the statutory injunction.”
Evelyn drops the loan package onto the conference table between my tea and a bowl of wrapped peppermints no living person has ever willingly eaten.
For reasons I can’t explain, my first thought is of Grant spending forty minutes arguing with an airline over a twenty-eight-dollar baggage fee because charging separately for luggage was, in his words, legalized extortion.
Eight-point-four million dollars, though.
Fiscal conservatism gets remarkably flexible when the prize is another six and a half percent of a company he already can’t control.
“May have?”
Evelyn pushes her glasses higher. “I’m a lawyer. We say may until a judge gives us permission to say what the fuck were you thinking?”
Despite myself, I laugh.
She turns the first page toward me. Grant was served with the divorce complaint before he financed the Russell purchase, which means the automatic injunction was already in effect.
Neither of us is supposed to transfer, hide, dispose of, or borrow against disputed marital property without the other’s consent or a court order, outside ordinary living expenses and legitimate business activity.
Grant’s lawyers knew that. Charles is many things; stupid has never been one of them.
Which explains why the loan package works so hard to make every piece of collateral sound unquestionably Grant’s.
Pre-marriage publishing interests. Future touring receivables payable directly to him.
Marketable securities sitting in an account with only his name on it.
Each asset tucked into its own tidy little box with enough legal language around it to suggest the box has been hermetically sealed since birth.
Eleven years of marriage have a way of fucking up tidy boxes.
Some royalties were earned during the marriage.
Some investments were funded during it. Some accounts appreciated because marital money went into them.
Touring contracts were negotiated during years when I was writing songs, putting my own money into Mercer, sitting through strategy meetings, and periodically reminding Grant that toothpaste didn’t materialize in the bathroom through divine intervention.
“He thinks his name on an account makes the money his.”
“He wouldn’t be the first divorcing man to discover that brokerage statements are not declarations of independence.”
I take another look at the financing documents. “Can you undo the purchase?”
“We could ask for relief connected to it.”
“I don’t want to.”
Evelyn’s brows lift.
“Russell wanted out. Grant wanted in. They both had lawyers, the audit wasn’t hidden, and nobody lied to him about what he was buying.” I push the papers back toward her. “I’m not asking a judge to rescue Grant from an overpriced decision he fought this hard to make.”
A very small smile appears. “Good. Because unwinding the transaction is not my first choice either.”
“What is?”
“Records.” She taps the loan package. “I want the source of the three-point-three million cash contribution. I want every asset pledged to secure the loan, the lender’s classification of each one, every transfer Grant made after service, and every account touched in connection with the purchase.
If all of it is genuinely separate property, his lawyers can prove it. ”
“And if it isn’t?”
“If he knowingly encumbered marital property after the injunction took effect, we address the violation. More importantly, if this transaction reduces the marital estate, I want a record showing exactly whose decision caused the reduction when property is divided.”
“So Grant could keep his shiny new shares and eat the loss himself.”
“Potentially.”
“And the debt.”
“Potentially.”
“And if Mercer keeps dropping?”
Evelyn studies me over the top of her glasses. “Laurel, I need you to stop looking so pleased in my conference room. I do have professional standards.”
I laugh. “You said what the fuck were you thinking less than five minutes ago.”
“That was a term of art.”
“Very prestigious profession.”
“Deeply.”
She closes the loan package. Evelyn is filing for an expedited accounting and an order preventing either of us from pledging additional disputed assets until the court figures out what belongs where.
Grant’s lawyers will argue the collateral is separate property; Evelyn will tell them to prove it.
Forensic accountants will get involved, valuation people will bill by the hour, tax lawyers will materialize from whatever expensive cave they live in, and both sides will produce enough paper to make the continued existence of marriage seem economically irresponsible.
Strangely, I prefer it this way.
I don’t want a magical divorce button that transfers Grant’s bank balance into mine because he hurt me. I don’t want a judge punishing him for being a terrible husband, and I sure as hell don’t need the universe inventing consequences on my behalf.
I want the numbers.
The signatures. The dates. The accounts. Every dollar traced from where it started to wherever Grant decided it needed to go.
If he used his own money, fine.
If he used ours, I want it documented.
And if he leveraged millions trying to claw his way back into control of Mercer only to discover he had financed another problem for himself, I want the paperwork to say exactly that.
Forty-five minutes later, my voice therapist has me blowing bubbles through a silicone straw, which is either excellent medical care or a practical joke requiring an impressive number of credentials.
Jenna McKee works out of a speech and voice clinic near Vanderbilt and has the aggressively hydrated appearance of a woman who considers room-temperature water a personality trait.
Levin sent over my new imaging; Dr. Mehta’s office forwarded the old operative notes.
Jenna spends our first twenty minutes asking questions I’ve answered individually for years but never all in the same room: what hurts, exactly where, how long I can talk before fatigue sets in, whether speaking feels different from singing, whether mornings are easier, whether alcohol makes it worse, whether anyone ever properly ruled out reflux, what I do on bad voice days, how often I clear my throat.
“All the damn time.”
“We’re stopping that.”
“I’m thirty-five. I’ve been clearing my throat since childhood.”
“Great. You’ve had decades to become very accomplished at doing it wrong.”
I like her immediately.
She records a baseline—sustained vowels, pitch glides, reading, a few gentle sung notes—and hearing my own voice come back through clinical speakers remains a uniquely shitty experience.
I know what used to come out of me. More than that, I know where everything is supposed to happen: where the sound should catch, where a note should ring clean, where breath should hold instead of leaking through the gap the left fold no longer closes properly.
My ear gets there even when my voice doesn’t.
“Sorry.”
Jenna stops adjusting something on the computer. “For what?”
I gesture vaguely at the speaker.
“You’re not auditioning, Laurel. I’m measuring.”
“Measurement can be rude.”
“So can patients.”
“I think this relationship has real potential.”
Her mouth twitches. “Straw.”
For the next hour, my glamorous return to music consists of straw phonation, gentle humming, easy onset, breath work, and being repeatedly instructed not to attack consonants like they owe me money. Nothing hurts. Nothing would survive thirty seconds in the inspirational montage version of my life.
Maybe that’s why it gets to me.
There’s no stage, no spotlight, no miraculous first note that makes a room full of people cry. Just me, learning that if I get any meaningful part of my voice back, it may happen ten boring minutes at a time.
Jenna hands me a daily schedule at the end. It is short, so naturally my first thought is to double it.
“No.”
I glance up. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face did. Follow the schedule. Ten minutes, twice a day. You fatigue, you stop. Pain gets above a two, you stop. No doubling sessions, no making up missed ones, no deciding discomfort means progress.”
I slouch lower in the chair. “I don’t like how specifically targeted this feels.”
“The injection gives us information,” she says. “It doesn’t give you permission to prove anything.”
I purse my mouth as I fold the sheet and tuck it into my bag. When Dr. Levin first offered the trial injection, five weeks sounded comfortably theoretical. Now it’s a little over two weeks away, and every day between here and Boston makes hope harder to keep at a safe distance.
I’m halfway through the lobby when my phone lights up with Celia Mercer.
For three rings, I seriously consider pretending I never saw it. Instead I step beneath the awning outside into an August afternoon hot enough to bake the smell out of the pavement and answer.
“Hi.”
Celia dispenses with hello entirely. “Would you tell me whether I’m allowed to see you, or am I expected to continue driving around Nashville with a casserole in my passenger seat like an elderly stalker?”
I close my eyes. “Celia—”
“I realize elderly is inflammatory. Focus on the casserole.”
A horn gives one short, suspiciously polite chirp from the parking lot.
Three spaces from my Range Rover sits a dusty-rose Porsche 911, a color so specific I know who owns it before the driver’s window even lowers.
Celia comes into view, sporting oversized sunglasses and throws her whole arm out, waving at me with absolutely none of her usual dignity.
Not the little society-page flutter she gives people across banquet rooms either.
A full, ridiculous wave, her bracelets sliding halfway to her elbow as she grins at me like she’s just pulled off the funniest stunt of her life.
I’ve known this woman for fourteen years and have never seen her smile that wide.
Whatever was left of my resistance dissolves in the scorching heat.
I stare at her. “Are you fucking serious?”
∞∞∞