Chapter 43
LAUREL
My family hauls me back to Green Hills and spends the afternoon treating my freshly acquired legal independence like an occasion hovering somewhere between a funeral and a birthday party.
Nora’s cake gets absolutely mauled. Dean orders barbecue for what appears to be a small congregation even though there are five adults in the house, since portion control has apparently violated one of his core beliefs.
Mama eventually digs the chipped snow globe out of Grant’s box, wipes the glass with the hem of her shirt and sets it on my mantel like she pays property taxes here.
I nearly tell her to move it. Instead I stare at the stupid little Kentucky skyline for a second and let it stay.
The marriage happened. Grant happened. I was happy with him for a long fucking time before I wasn’t, and I’m done treating every artifact from those years like it might bite me if I leave it in plain sight.
Keeping the globe doesn’t mean I want my ex-husband back. It means there was a time Grant saw something stupid in a gas station and thought of me. That was real too. I’m not letting the way we ended rewrite everything that came before it.
Monica opens a bottle of wine only after asking whether Jenna has cleared me for a glass, then immediately starts laughing at herself over the fact my voice therapist runs family celebrations now.
Caroline FaceTimes halfway through dinner, and Celia pops into frame long enough to announce that the yellow lemon towel Grant packed my things in technically belongs to her since she bought the set at Target.
Mama calls bullshit so fast I nearly choke on my drink.
Celia claims she has receipts from 2014, and within thirty seconds my divorce celebration has turned into two grown women threatening to produce evidence over a faded kitchen towel worth maybe six dollars.
The kids eventually shove their way into frame, and Rory studies me with the solemnity of someone about to rule on custody. “So you’re all the way divorced now?”
“Pretty aggressively, yes.”
She thinks that over. “Okay. I still like Aunt Laurel better.”
Caroline yells from somewhere offscreen that there was never a competition, and Dean mutters, “Sounds like something the losing side would say,” earning an elbow from Monica.
For a few hours, the house is loud and messy and smells like barbecue, vanilla frosting and wine.
Cake crumbs are everywhere. Dean keeps stealing burnt ends off the tray after swearing he’s full.
Mama and Celia are still arguing over a damn towel.
Grief is here too, obviously, but tonight it has to fight for room with bad jokes, sticky fingers, too much food and people who love me loudly. I can live with that.
Nora stays after everyone else clears out because she knows me well enough not to ask if I need company. We wind up on the kitchen floor with the bakery box between us, eating leftover cake straight from the cardboard like plates have become an unreasonable burden.
Somewhere around my third forkful she asks, “Want me to call Beckett?”
“Eventually.”
She pauses with frosting halfway to her mouth. “Aggressively vague answer.”
“I don’t want him walking through the door five minutes after everyone leaves just because I’m scared to be alone tonight.”
Her face does that soft thing I immediately resent. “Disgustingly healthy.”
“I know. I hate it here.”
“Growth is fucking awful.”
So she stays another hour and has the decency not to turn any of it into therapy. Instead she plays me a voice memo from a songwriter who apparently believes whiskey tears is the phrase country music has been waiting for, and we spend twelve deeply necessary minutes tearing it to absolute shit.
When Nora finally leaves, I lock the door behind her, set the alarm and stand in the middle of my living room.
Half a cake in the refrigerator. Divorce papers abandoned on the counter.
A chipped Kentucky snow globe on the mantel.
The whole house goes quiet, and for a second I wait for the silence to turn ugly—for loneliness to rush in and make me regret not calling Beckett, not asking Nora to sleep over, not filling every room with another person just so I don’t have to hear myself think. It doesn’t.
The house stays quiet. I stay standing. Nothing caves in.
Turns out I can survive an empty room too.
∞∞∞
I shower off the courthouse, scrub the makeup from my face and trade the clothes I got divorced in for old cotton shorts and one of Daddy’s enormous, faded Highwaymen T-shirts that falls halfway down my thighs.
Medication. Water. Jenna’s exercises exactly once, since a final decree doesn’t entitle me to bonus vocal range.
Then I sit on the edge of my bed with damp hair dripping down my back and do the deeply inconvenient thing of feeling every damn bit of it without trying to organize, fix or outrun anything.
I’m divorced. Years of loving Grant Mercer have come down to contracts, a house closing and the profoundly romantic fact that we still own chunks of the same record company.
I keep waiting for the judge’s signature to do something dramatic about Beckett too. Blow the guilt out of me. Flip some internal switch from wrong to allowed. It doesn’t.
Turns out the guilt was never really about whether I was legally permitted to want him. It was about chronology. About the cheap version of my life strangers could tell—or, on a bad day, the version I could use to beat the shit out of myself.
Husband cheats. Wife leaves. Wife replaces him with his richer enemy. Cute. Efficient. Absolute bullshit.
I left Grant before I ever let Beckett become a possibility.
I rented this house without Beckett paying a dime toward it.
I went to Boston with Mama. I fought my way back to Nora and rebuilt the friendship I helped wreck.
I sang before Beckett ever heard me sing.
Bellamy House carries my name, my money and decisions no man made for me.
Beckett has watched me grieve Grant right in front of him and never once treated my pain like a door he could shove his foot through.
I’ve disagreed with him, told him no, told him to back off, changed my mind and changed it again.
I say no and he stays kind. I say yes and he still asks.
That matters more tonight than I expected it to.
Whatever happens next isn’t revenge, rebound math or some elaborate fuck-you to my ex-husband. Beckett isn’t the next chapter in Grant’s story.
He’s part of mine.
The thought sits there, solid enough that eventually I reach for my phone.
There’s a text from Beckett, sent hours after the hearing ended. Miracle of miracles, a man actually understands what give me space means.
Beckett: No response needed. I hope you have people around you today.
Laurel: They just left.
His reply comes a few minutes later, and apparently I’ve lost my mind because I’m pleased he was off living his life instead of staring at his phone waiting for my divorce to become official.
Beckett: How are you?
Laurel: Sad. Relieved. Pissed off that I’m sad. Hungry again even though Dean ordered barbecue for half of Tennessee. Free feels dramatic, but I don’t know what else to call it.
Beckett: All of those sound allowed.
A smile gets me, and some of the tension finally leaves my body. I read his message twice, stare at the blinking cursor and type the sentence I’ve been circling for days.
Laurel: Come see me tomorrow.