Chapter 38 #3
The list keeps shrinking. Money I’ve treated permanent my whole adult life starts showing its actual face—pledged, disputed, tied up, depreciating, unavailable.
I’m still rich. I know I’m still fucking rich.
But men like me don’t wake up poor one morning because the universe empties a bank account for dramatic effect.
It happens asset by asset, each one protected because this piece matters, this one stays, this one can’t possibly be the thing you sell, until eventually the lender stops asking what you’re willing to part with and starts choosing for you.
I rehearse anyway, singing is the only part of the day that doesn’t require an explanation, and even that turns on me when we reach After the Fire, the ballad Laurel wrote seven years ago that became my biggest crossover record.
Halfway through the second chorus, I stop. The band carries on for another two bars before the monitors crackle and my tour director asks if I need water.
“Again.” We restart, hit the same lyric about coming home after pride burns the house down, and I want to put the microphone through the fucking stage.
“Cut it. Take it off the set.” My musical director stares at me from behind the keys and reminds me it’s the biggest singalong in the show.
“I don’t give a shit.” He tries the promoter argument next.
I shut him down again. Nobody moves until Tessa’s voice comes from the back of the floor.
“You can’t cut the song because the lyrics are hitting a little too close to home.”
Perfect fucking timing.
A few crew members become fascinated by the floor.
I ask everyone to get out, and Tessa waits until the arena empties before coming closer.
She’s here for tomorrow’s press strategy: the network cancellation is public, Redwood is public, Southern Crown is public, and my team needs something clean before rehearsal footage becomes content. I inform her I’m not doing interviews.
“Good. I was prepared to chain you to something.” Her attention shifts to the stage. “Keep the song.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s hers.”
Tessa’s expression changes. “A lot of them are hers.”
“I know.”
“Do you really?”
Something in me snaps. “I sang the songs. I toured them. I produced the fucking records. I built the audience. I worked every shitty club in this country when Laurel wanted to stay home and write.”
Tessa nods. “All true. She helped build it too.”
“So what the fuck does everyone want from me?”
“Maybe nothing.” She says it without heat. “Maybe that’s what keeps scrambling your head. You keep treating accountability like an invoice. Pay it, settle the balance, get your old life back. There may not be a transaction here.”
I stare out at the empty seats until I finally say the part digging under my skin. “She never even told me she was writing again.”
“Why would she?”
“I am still her husband!”
The divorce proposal arrives before I leave the arena. Evelyn sends it through Charles, since even the death of my marriage now comes through fucking channels.
Laurel doesn’t ask for everything, and that shit scares me more than if she had.
She proposes selling the house unless one of us buys the other out at an independent valuation; she keeps her twenty-one percent of Mercer subject to whatever restructuring comes later, I keep my forty-eight and a half plus the Russell debt tied to my post-filing purchase, and anything disputed gets left for the court if we can’t agree.
What’s mine stays mine, what’s marital gets picked apart by the forensic accountants and split, and the catalogue gets unfucked—anything the audit says Mercer had no business controlling goes back to Laurel, the registrations get corrected, every dollar gets accounted for, and whatever she lost gets paid back or knocked off the settlement.
No spousal support, no claim on the lake house, no grab at touring money that is actually mine.
Charles finishes and says, “Aggressive, but not insane.”
I hate the entire fucking thing on sight.
“She wants to sell the house.”
“She doesn’t want to live there.”
“Then I’ll buy her out.”
He gives me a look I already know I’m going to hate. “With what liquid money?”
“We can structure it. Refinance. Move some shit around.”
“You’re already trying to cure a bridge collateral deficiency.”
“Then use the house.”
“It’s jointly titled, Grant. The preservation order is in place, and you don’t get to borrow against it by yourself.”
“I’m not borrowing against it by myself. I’m buying her out.”
“You still need Laurel’s consent or a judge to sign off until the property is allocated.”
“She’ll consent.”
Charles leans back. “If you can show financing and a clean source of funds.”
I stare down at the proposal. Every road now runs through someone else—Laurel, a judge, a lender, some fucking committee. People I used to walk past without asking shit.
My phone lights up with a music-trade alert before Charles finishes talking.
Laurel Bellamy returns to songwriting with new publishing company.
No Beckett anywhere in it. Barely a fucking sentence about the divorce.
The whole story is Laurel. Nora says they’re writing again, Bellamy House Songs confirms one new song and gives the usual bullshit line about there being “no release plans to announce,” and some source says Laurel is working carefully with her medical team and hasn’t committed to performing.
Then, like the article hasn’t already done enough damage, it links an old Ryman video.
I press play.
Twenty-six-year-old Laurel fills my screen in the same dress as the photograph sitting in my office, back when I used to think forever meant I could keep putting shit off because there would always be another day with her. Another conversation. Another apology. Another chance to get it right.
The room in the video goes dead quiet when she starts singing.
I used to stand in the wings and watch men realize how fucking extraordinary my wife was, and I hated every one of them for it.
For years I told myself jealousy was simple: other men wanted Laurel, and I wanted them to keep their goddamn eyes off what was mine.
Turns out that wasn’t the part that scared me.
The part that scared me was Laurel remembering she could walk into a room without me and still have every person in it hanging on her next breath.
My phone lights up again, and Charles sees the sender first.
Bridge lender.
Notice of collateral deficiency — cure period: ten business days.
The number underneath kills every other thought in my head. Charles reads over my shoulder, sits back and doesn’t say shit.
This time, I don’t tell him to sell something. I just sit there staring at everything I own in my head, trying to figure out which piece gets ripped away first.