Chapter 42 #2
Grant sets the cardboard box on a low stone wall and folds back the flaps.
The snow globe is inside, wrapped in one of our old kitchen towels—the yellow one with faded lemons I bought at Target after Grant announced grown adults should own matching towels, then spent eleven years grabbing whichever one his hand touched first.
Under it are two notebooks, the framed photograph of Daddy I thought disappeared during the move, my grandmother’s silver serving spoon and a cassette marked LAUREL DEMOS — 2012 in my own handwriting.
“Movers found all of it in the back cabinet of my office.” His fingers hover near the box, then retreat. “The globe too. I know you didn’t ask for it. I just… figured it should come with the rest.”
I run my thumb along the cardboard edge without touching anything inside. “Thank you.”
He nods, and silence steps into the place where over a decade of shorthand used to live.
Grant looks like shit up close. Not ruined, not penniless, not whatever theatrical punishment strangers online seem to think adultery should trigger overnight.
He is still good looking, still wearing a watch worth more than my first car, still rich enough for his version of financial distress to piss off most of America.
But exhaustion has taken up permanent residence.
Shadows bruise the skin under his eyes. There’s a nick near his chin from a bad shave and a faint tremor in the hand he shoves into his pocket when he notices me noticing.
His tour opens next week. Our house is headed for the market.
The lake belongs to strangers. Mercer is still chewing through the corporate fallout, lawyers are still billing everyone into the fucking earth, and Grant still owns percent of a company he nearly strangled trying to control.
He also still has hit records, touring money, investments, assets, a career most musicians would sell organs for.
Misery hasn’t made him poor. It has only managed to prove money is spectacularly useless at certain jobs.
“I saw the Bellamy House announcement,” he says.
“Okay.”
A tiny pull at one corner of his mouth. Once, I would’ve rescued him from that answer. Apparently divorced Laurel has hobbies now.
“The song with Nora. Is it good?”
“I think so.”
“You record it yet?”
“A rough demo.”
He nods, looking into the box instead of at me. “I’m not asking to hear it.”
Did he really think I would’ve said yes?
“Okay.”
Another stretch of quiet passes before he lifts his head. “I’m sorry. I know saying it now is kind of fucking offensive.”
“Very actually.”
“I’m not asking you to forgive me.”
“Good.”
His mouth almost twitches. “Charles would appreciate the efficiency.”
A laugh nearly escapes me, and Grant sees it. For half a second his whole face changes and I get the man I married back—the one who could find me in a bad mood and annoy me out of it before I noticed what he was doing. It vanishes just as fast.
“I didn’t understand what I was doing when I was doing it,” he says.
“And, yeah, I hear how convenient that sounds.” He looks off across the parking lot.
“Everything had a justification. Mercer needed the catalogue, so I moved the catalogue. I was scared you’d leave, so I made damn sure certain offers never reached you.
I wanted Sloane’s record to work, so I told myself you’d get over the song.
I wanted to fuck someone else, so I decided sex didn’t count as long as I came home loving you.
” A rough laugh leaves him. “Every shitty decision came with a reason attached. Turns out reasons are cheap as hell.”
I study him for a long second. “You know what actually killed it for me?”
His attention snaps back.
“It wasn’t only Sloane. It wasn’t Camille either.
” I fold my arms, mostly so I have somewhere to put my hands.
“It was finding out how many times you came to a decision that belonged to me, didn’t like the answer I might give, and answered for me instead.
” His face changes, but I keep going. I’ve carried this sentence too damn long to soften it now.
“I might’ve chosen you, Grant. That’s the part you get to live with.
Maybe I would’ve turned down Beckett’s first offer.
Maybe after my injury I would’ve been too scared to touch the publishing imprint.
Maybe I would’ve let Mercer keep administering half those songs because I still believed in what we built.
You don’t know. You’ll never know. You loved me so much you couldn’t risk giving me the chance to say no. ”
His eyes fill, and he turns away like the parking lot has suddenly become fascinating. “I know.”
“Do you?”
“Now.” The word comes out wrecked. He presses his lips together, gets himself under control and looks at me again. “I hope the surgery works.”
“Thank you.”
He leaves everything in the box. I leave the space between us untouched.
Grant takes one step back. “Goodbye, Laurel.”
The words split somewhere clean down the middle of me, and for one second every version of him I’ve ever loved seems to be standing there at once.
I keep my hands at my sides. “Goodbye, Grant.”
He turns first. I watch him cross the lot and disappear around the courthouse corner, then look down at the box between my hands: Daddy’s photograph, my old demos, my grandmother’s spoon, two notebooks and a snow globe I never asked to keep.
And I cry anyway.
Some endings are still sad, even when leaving is the thing that saves you.