11. Boone
BOONE
The house was quiet when I pulled up the drive.
I cut the engine and sat there for a minute, watching the windows.
No lights on inside, even though the afternoon was fading into that gray hour before sunset.
Carly's car wasn't in the driveway. That wasn't unusual.
She ran errands, visited Dee, went to the market whenever she felt like it.
I grabbed my jacket from the passenger seat and my phone from the cup holder, then headed inside.
The front door was unlocked. I kicked off my boots in the hall and dropped my keys on the side table where we always left them. "Carly?"
Nothing came back. Just the hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen and the tick of the old clock on the mantel.
I shrugged out of my jacket and tossed it over the back of the chair.
The living room looked the same as it always did.
Couch with the blue throw blanket Carly kept folded over one arm, coffee table with a stack of magazines she never read, the old upright piano against the far wall that had been here when we bought the place.
She'd fallen in love with it immediately, said it had character even though half the keys stuck and it hadn't been tuned in probably a decade.
"Carly?" I called again, louder this time, my voice carrying up the stairs and into the empty rooms above.
Still nothing.
I walked through to the kitchen, my socked feet quiet on the hardwood.
The counters were clean. Spotless, actually.
No coffee mug in the sink, no plate left out from lunch, no crumbs on the cutting board.
The dish towel hung neatly on the oven door, folded into precise thirds the way Carly always did it.
I opened the fridge out of habit, not sure what I was looking for.
Milk, eggs, butter, leftover chicken from two nights ago in a glass container with the blue lid.
Everything in its place. I closed it and stood there, feeling stupid for looking.
She was probably at the bar. That made sense.
She went there most afternoons, helped Dee with inventory or prepped for the evening crowd or just sat at the counter and talked.
She'd been quiet the last few days, distant in a way I couldn't quite name.
Not angry, not cold, just somewhere else even when she was standing right next to me.
I'd meant to ask her about it last night, but Tuck had called about the tour schedule and the dates we needed to lock in for the fall, and by the time I'd hung up she'd already gone to bed.
I should've asked.
I headed upstairs, taking the steps two at a time because the house felt too quiet and I needed to move.
The bedroom door was open. I stepped inside and stopped.
The notebook was on the shelf by the window.
Spiral-bound, black cover, worn from years of being opened and carried to sessions, the corners bent from being shoved into bags.
Every song we'd ever written together was in there.
I knew without looking that her handwriting filled the margins of every page, fixing my clumsy rhymes, tightening my loose rhythms, crossing out entire verses and rewriting them in the space above.
Her notes were small and precise, the way she wrote everything.
I didn't touch it. Never did, unless we were working on something.
On the wall above the dresser, her Juilliard degree sat in its frame.
Black frame, white matting, the glass clean and free of dust. She kept it that way.
Dusted it every week, even though she'd worked so hard for it and then walked away from everything it opened.
Four years at Juilliard. Top of her class.
Offers from everywhere. She could have sung anywhere, made a name for herself, built the career she'd trained for.
Instead she'd come back to Nashville and married me.
I'd asked her once, early on, if she ever regretted it.
She'd shrugged and said something about choosing what mattered, then changed the subject.
I hadn't pressed. That was years ago now.
I crossed the room and pulled open her dresser drawers. The top one was nearly empty. The second had a few T-shirts left. The third held a pair of jeans and not much else. My chest tightened. I bent down and looked under the bed. The suitcase she kept there was gone.
God, what was I even doing, going through her drawers like some kind of detective?
I closed the drawer harder than I meant to and turned around.
The bed was made, the quilt pulled tight and tucked under the pillows.
Her nightstand was bare. No book with the spine cracked open to hold her place, no reading glasses with the little scratch on one lens, no hair tie looped around the base of the lamp where she always left it.
I picked up my phone and checked the time.
Three-thirty. She should've been home by now if she'd gone out this morning.
Unless she wasn't planning to come home.
The thought came fast and sharp, and I shoved it away before it could settle.
I sat down on the edge of the bed, trying to think, trying to piece together what I was seeing.
Maybe she'd gone to stay with Dee for a few days.
That was possible. They were close. Carly told Dee things she didn't tell me, which I'd never minded because I figured every woman needed a friend who wasn't her husband, someone who'd listen without trying to fix everything.
But she would've said something if she was leaving for more than an afternoon, wouldn't she?
Left a note on the counter, sent a text, something.
I pulled open the nightstand drawer on her side, the one where she kept books and pens and the little notebook she used for grocery lists.
Empty.
Something lodged in my chest. I swallowed hard, trying to loosen it, but the pressure stayed.
I stood up and scanned the room again, looking for anything that would tell me I was wrong, that I was jumping to conclusions.
The framed photo of us on our wedding day was still on the dresser. The shot was from behind, both of us walking away from the church, her hand in mine. She'd picked it because she said it felt like the beginning of something. I stared at it longer than I should have.
Her jewelry box was there too, the wooden one with the carved lid.
I opened it. A few pairs of earrings, the little silver hoops she wore every day, a bracelet I'd given her for Christmas three years ago that she'd never put on.
The ring holder in the center was empty, but I already knew that.
I'd found her wedding band at the studio this morning, sitting on the mixing board like she'd forgotten it.
Except Carly didn't forget things.
My pulse kicked up, hard and insistent against my ribs. I tried to shove the feeling down, to tell myself I was overreacting, but it stuck in my chest like something alive, something I couldn't ignore.
This wasn't a few days at Dee's. This was something else entirely.
I went back downstairs, moving faster now, my hands shaking just slightly.
I stood in the hallway, breathing too hard, trying to make sense of it.
She'd packed. That much was clear. The suitcase was gone, the dresser drawers half-empty.
But when? I'd left for the studio at eight this morning.
She'd still been asleep, or I thought she had been.
I hadn't checked. Hadn't kissed her goodbye or said I'd see her tonight. Just grabbed my keys and left.
Maybe she'd been awake. Maybe she'd been lying there, waiting for me to leave so she could pack and go.
The thought hit me like a fist to the stomach.
I pulled out my phone and found her name in my contacts, my thumb hovering over the call button.
What was I supposed to say? Hey, did you leave me?
That sounded insane, like I'd lost my mind.
Maybe she'd just needed space. Maybe I was reading this wrong, making it bigger than it was.
Mama had said to let her cool off when I'd told her about the ring this morning.
That's what I'd planned to do — give Carly the day, talk to her tonight when I got home, figure out what was going on and how to fix it.
But this didn't feel like cooling off. This felt like the floor dropping out from under me.
I hit the button. The phone rang once, twice, three times. My jaw clenched. Four rings. Five.
Voicemail. Her voice, bright and warm, asking me to leave a message.
"Hey, it's me," I said, trying to keep my voice steady even though my hands were shaking. "Just got home. Uh. Give me a call when you get this, okay? I just want to make sure you're all right."
I hung up and stared at the screen like it might do something, like she might call back in the next five seconds and tell me she'd just gone to the store, that she'd be home soon, that everything was fine.
The screen stayed dark.
The panic I'd been holding back crept up my spine, cold and insistent. I called again.
Same thing. Five rings, then her voicemail. I didn't leave a message this time. What was the point?
I opened my texts instead and typed fast, my fingers clumsy on the screen.
Where are you?
Send.
I waited. No typing bubble appeared. I typed again.
Carly, I'm home. Call me.
Send.
Still nothing. I tried one more.
Please.
I watched the screen, willing it to light up, willing her to answer. No read receipt. No response. Just silence.
I tried calling again, because I didn't know what else to do.
It rang through, same as before. My hands were shaking now, enough that I noticed, enough that I had to grip the phone tighter to keep from dropping it.
I shoved it in my pocket and paced the length of the hallway, from the front door to the kitchen and back again.
This wasn't like her. Even when we fought — which wasn't often, because I usually backed down before it got that far — she didn't disappear.
She'd go to the bar, cool off for a few hours, come home and we'd talk it out.
She didn't leave without saying anything. She didn't pack her things and vanish.
I pulled the phone out again and checked my messages. Still nothing.
My chest felt like it was caving in. I didn't want to name what I was feeling, didn't want to say it out loud or even admit it to myself, but it was there anyway, sitting heavy in my stomach, making my hands shake and my throat close up and my pulse race like I'd been running.
Don't, I thought. Don't go there. Not yet. You don't know anything for sure.
The notebook was still on the shelf upstairs, where I'd seen it.
For a second I thought about going back up there and opening it, flipping through the pages, reading through the songs we'd written, looking for some clue I'd missed, some sign that she'd been unhappy or angry or planning this.
But I didn't. It felt wrong, like I'd be violating something private, something that was hers even though we'd made it together.
Her degree was still on the wall above the dresser too.
If she'd really left — if this was permanent, if she wasn't coming back — she would've taken those, wouldn't she?
The notebook with every song we'd ever written, the degree she'd earned before she met me, the things that mattered.
I held onto that thought. It steadied me, just a little.
She wouldn't leave those behind if she was really gone.
But the wedding ring was at the studio. She'd taken it off and left it there.
I closed my eyes and pressed the heels of my hands against them until I saw stars.
I tried to remember the last time I'd really looked at her, not a glance while I was checking my phone or running out the door to a meeting, but actually looked.
Last night, maybe. We'd been at the studio.
She'd been sitting on the couch at the back of the room while I worked with Savannah on the new album, going over the direction and nailing down the demo for her dad.
I'd asked Carly if we could push dinner to the next night because I needed to finish the demo.
I don't even remember if she answered. I'd already turned back to the work, already thinking about what we needed to get done.
God.
I was an idiot.
I grabbed my keys off the side table and headed for the door, shoving my feet into my boots without bothering to tie them.
Dee's bar was twenty minutes away, less if I pushed it and didn't hit traffic.
Carly would be there. She had to be. She went there when she needed to think, when she needed space, when she needed someone to talk to who wasn't me.
And if she wasn't there, Dee would know where she'd gone. Dee always knew.
I didn't let myself think past that. Didn't let myself imagine what it would mean if Dee didn't know either, if Carly had packed and left and told no one where she was going.
The house was too quiet behind me. I couldn't stay here, couldn't sit in the silence and wait for her to come back or call or do anything at all.
I got in the truck and started the engine, my mind already racing through what I'd say when I saw her. I'm sorry. I should've been paying attention. Tell me what's wrong and I'll fix it. Just come home and we'll figure it out.
The dread sat in my chest like a stone, heavy and cold, but I ignored it. I had to.
Carly was at Dee's. That's where she always went.