17. Carly
CARLY
I set my phone on the bar and stared at it.
The screen was dark, reflecting the dim overhead lights and my own tired face.
I'd been sitting in the corner booth at Dee's for over an hour now, nursing the same glass of water and trying to work up the courage to make this call.
Around me the bar was quiet for a Thursday night, just a handful of regulars scattered at tables and a couple at the far end talking in low voices.
Nobody was paying attention to me, which was good. I didn't want an audience for this.
My hands rested flat on either side of the phone.
They weren't shaking, which surprised me.
I thought they would be by now, thought I'd be falling apart, but instead I just felt hollow.
Tired. Like I'd been running on fumes for so long that I'd finally hit empty and my body didn't know what to do except keep going.
I'd spent the last hour replaying everything Savannah had said to me.
The dinner in Atlanta. The ice cream shop.
The photo she claimed existed. The charger Boone left behind because he'd been too distracted by her to pack it properly.
Every detail had felt too specific to be a guess, too calculated to be random.
She'd known things. Things she shouldn't have known unless she'd been there, unless Boone had told her, unless I was the one who'd been left out of my own marriage.
I picked up the phone. The screen lit up under my thumb, showing the time and a wallpaper photo I kept meaning to change. It was from two years ago, back when Boone and I still took photos together. Back when I thought we were solid.
God, I'd been so stupid.
I no longer doubted Atlanta.
That realization settled over me like a blanket I couldn't kick off, heavy and suffocating.
For days I'd been holding onto the possibility that Savannah was lying.
That she'd made the whole thing up because she was jealous or vindictive or just wanted to hurt me for the sake of hurting me.
I'd told myself the details didn't matter, that she was probably guessing, that anyone could have looked up where Boone went to dinner if they tried hard enough.
But I didn't believe that anymore.
The details were too precise. The way she'd smiled when she said the name of the restaurant, like she was daring me to check. The way she'd mentioned the charger so casually, like it was common knowledge. Like she'd heard the story from Boone himself, maybe even laughed with him about it.
I wanted the details to be false. I wanted to call Emily and have her tell me Savannah was making it all up, that none of it had happened the way she said. But wanting something didn't make it true, and I was done lying to myself.
I opened my contacts and scrolled to Emily's name. My sister-in-law. The woman who'd been Boone's assistant for five years, who managed his schedule and cleaned up his messes and knew more about his day-to-day life than I did. If anyone could confirm or deny what Savannah had said, it was Emily.
The question was how to ask without giving away why I was asking.
I pressed the call button before I could talk myself out of it. The phone rang once, twice, and then Emily's voice came through, bright and a little distracted the way it always was when she was multitasking.
"Carly! Hey, what's up?"
"Hey." I cleared my throat, trying to sound normal. Casual. Like this was just a random call to check in. "Do you have a minute?"
"Sure, yeah. I'm just finishing up some emails for Boone's publicist, but I can talk. What's going on?"
I picked at the edge of a coaster on the bar in front of me, peeling off a thin strip of cardboard. My chest felt tight, but I made myself sound light. Easy. "I was actually thinking about that trip to Atlanta a couple months ago. The one Boone took for the radio interviews."
There was a pause on the other end. Not long, maybe a second or two, but it was enough to make my stomach flip.
"Okay," Emily said slowly. "What about it?"
"I just—" I stopped, searching for the right words. I needed to make this sound unimportant. Like I was asking about something trivial. "Do you remember anything about his phone charger? He mentioned something about leaving it behind, and I thought maybe you'd know what happened with that."
Emily laughed, and the sound was so easy and uncomplicated that for a second I thought maybe I really was overreacting.
"Oh my God, yes. That was such a mess. He packed it in the wrong bag, and we didn't figure it out until we got to the hotel and his phone was already at like ten percent.
He was panicking because he had three interviews that afternoon and he kept saying he couldn't go on air with a dead phone. "
I pressed my thumb against the torn edge of the coaster. "So he didn't have the charger."
"Not until that night when he finally unpacked his carry-on properly and found it at the bottom under a bunch of papers.
I had to run out to one of those electronics stores and buy him a portable battery pack just to get him through the day.
" She laughed again. "He felt like such an idiot.
Why are you asking about this now? Did he lose another one? "
"No, nothing like that." My voice sounded strange even to me, flat and careful. "It just came up in conversation, and I couldn't remember the details."
"Well, yeah, he definitely didn't have it that day. I was so annoyed because I'd reminded him twice to check his bag before we left Nashville, and he swore he had everything." Emily sighed, but it was fond, the way you'd sigh about a kid who kept making the same mistake. "You know how he is."
I did know. That was the problem.
I swallowed hard and made myself ask the next question. "What about dinner that night? Do you remember where you went?"
Another pause. Longer this time. When Emily spoke again, her voice had changed. Still friendly, but with an edge of concern underneath. "Carly, is everything okay?"
"I'm fine." The lie came out too fast, and I tried to soften it, make it sound more believable. "I'm just trying to remember what Boone told me about the trip. You know how he is—he tells me a story and leaves out half the details, and then I can't piece it together later."
Emily made a small sound of agreement. "Yeah, that sounds like him.
" There was the rustle of papers on her end, and I could picture her shifting in her chair, tucking the phone between her shoulder and her ear.
"Let me think. We had dinner at this nice restaurant with private tables in the back.
What's it called—Canoe, I think? Boone wanted to go somewhere quiet because he was exhausted from all the interviews, and Tuck thought it would be good to have a meeting space where we could talk without being interrupted. "
My throat went tight. Canoe. The same restaurant Savannah had named.
I dug my nails into my palm, focusing on the sharp sting to keep my voice steady. "Was it just you and Boone?"
"What? No, Tuck was there. And two people from the label—I can't remember their names, but they were the ones handling the Atlanta market.
We had this whole dinner meeting about the promotional strategy for the next single.
" Emily paused. "Carly, seriously, what's going on?
Why are you asking about a dinner from two months ago? "
"Someone mentioned it," I said. The words felt clumsy in my mouth, but I pushed through. "And I realized I didn't remember Boone talking about it, so I thought I'd ask."
"Someone mentioned a random business dinner Boone had in Atlanta?" Emily's voice had gone from concerned to skeptical. "Who?"
"It's complicated." I rubbed my forehead with my free hand, trying to think of a way to end this conversation without making things worse. "I don't want to get into it right now."
"Okay." Emily didn't sound convinced. "But if something's wrong, you can tell me. You know that, right?"
"I know." My chest ached. Emily was kind. She'd always been kind to me, even when the rest of Boone's family treated me like I was beneath them. And here I was, lying to her, asking her questions I couldn't explain because the truth was too ugly to say out loud. "I appreciate it. Really."
"Anytime." She hesitated. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"I'm fine," I said again, and then I ended the call before she could ask anything else.
I set the phone down on the bar and stared at it. My hands were trembling now, just a little, and I pressed them flat against the wood to make them stop. My chest felt like someone had wrapped a band around my ribs and was pulling it tighter with every breath.
Emily had confirmed it. The charger in the wrong bag. The dinner at Canoe. Every detail Savannah had given me lined up perfectly with what Emily remembered.
But Emily had said other people were at the dinner. Tuck and the label executives. So if Savannah had been there, Emily would have known. She would have seen her, would have mentioned her name when she listed everyone who attended.
Unless Savannah hadn't been at the dinner at all.
I closed my eyes and let that thought settle.
Savannah didn't have to be in Atlanta for the details to be true.
She just had to know about them. And the only way she'd know was if Boone told her.
If he'd come home from that trip and shared the story with her—the charger, the restaurant, the panic over his dying phone—the way he used to share things with me.
The true parts were enough without the lie.
That was what hurt. It didn't matter if Savannah had been in Atlanta with him or if she'd made up the part about the ice cream shop or if the pregnancy was real.
What mattered was that Boone had let her close enough to know the details of his life.
The little things. The stupid everyday things that should have been mine to know, that a wife should hear about first.
I'd spent ten years writing his songs. Fixing his words, smoothing out his melodies, rewriting the lines that didn't scan until they were good enough to record.
I'd spent ten years running his house while he toured, making sure everything was taken care of so he didn't have to think about it.
And somewhere along the way, without me noticing, he'd stopped telling me about his days.
He'd stopped sharing the details. He'd built a space in his life where she fit and I didn't.
Savannah had been let closer to Boone than I had been.
The realization hit like a punch to the stomach. I wrapped my arms around my middle and tried to breathe through it, but the ache didn't ease. It just sat there, heavy and cold, spreading through my chest until I felt like I was drowning in it.
God, I was such an idiot.
I should have seen this coming. Should have noticed the way he checked his phone when I was talking, the way he nodded along without really listening, the way he'd stopped asking about my day or my songs or anything that mattered to me.
I'd told myself he was just busy, that the tour was taking up all his time and energy, that things would get better once he came home for good.
But things hadn't gotten better. They'd just gotten quieter. And I'd let it happen because I didn't want to admit that the man I married had stopped seeing me.
I picked up my phone and shoved it into my jacket pocket.
Around me, the bar hummed with quiet conversation and the clink of glasses.
The bartender glanced over at me, and I shook my head.
I didn't want another drink. I didn't want to sit here anymore, replaying the conversation with Emily until I drove myself crazy.
I wanted answers. Real ones.
I slid off the stool and grabbed my jacket from the back of the seat.
My legs felt unsteady, like I'd been sitting still for too long, but I forced myself to move.
One step, then another. Past the bar, past the small stage in the corner where I used to sing before Boone's career took off and I became the woman who stayed home and rewrote his songs in silence.
The front door swung open under my hand, and the night air hit me like a slap. Cold and sharp, biting at my face and cutting through the fog in my head. I stood there for a second, breathing it in, letting it clear away some of the tightness in my chest.
The parking lot was nearly empty. My car sat near the back, under a streetlight that flickered every few seconds. I walked toward it slowly, my boots crunching against the gravel. The cold helped. It gave me something to focus on besides the ache in my ribs and the sick twist in my stomach.
I was going to the big house outside Nashville.
The house Boone and I had bought together when his second album went platinum, back when I thought we were building something that would last. I was going to walk through that front door, find him wherever he was hiding, and make him tell me the truth.
Not the polished version he gave to interviewers.
Not the version that made him look good or let him off easy.
The real truth, messy and ugly and whatever it turned out to be.
And if he couldn't give me that, then I didn't know what we had left.
I unlocked the car and slid into the driver's seat. The engine turned over with a low rumble, and I sat there for a moment, staring out at the empty lot. My hands were still shaking, just a little, but I gripped the steering wheel until they steadied.
Then I put the car in drive and headed toward the house.