Chapter 3

They came to the hospital two days later.

Not to see Junie. Let's be clear about that.

We were at Rivergate for her pre-op workup — CT imaging, balance testing, a bright pink gown, a cartoon dinosaur taped to the ceiling above her bed. She was watching a tablet with captions on, tapping her foot to a rhythm she couldn't hear but could feel through the mattress, brave in a way that breaks you.

Charlene Rhodes swept into pediatric audiology in cream Chanel, her son trailing behind her with a leather folder, and neither of them so much as glanced at Room 308.

"Josie." She air-kissed the space beside my face. "Somewhere private. This floor smells like sick children."

We sat in the family consultation room.

Beau wouldn't look at me. Charlene had no such trouble.

"I'll be direct, because I respect you," she said, in the tone of a woman who has never respected anyone in her life. "Kacey Lane is pregnant. It's a boy. He'll be a Rhodes."

She said it like a title of nobility.

"Beau needs a divorce. Quick and quiet, before the vote." She slid the folder across the table. "We've had papers drawn. Very generous, considering."

I opened it.

I'd walk away with my clothes, my nine-year-old Tahoe, and a "goodwill payment" of twelve thousand dollars. The house, the accounts, the catalog, and all "label interests" would remain with Beau.

The house I bought. The accounts I filled. The catalog I wrote at three in the morning with a baby monitor on the piano.

"Sign it," Charlene said, "and we keep this civilized. Fight it, and I promise you, the Rhodes name still means something in this town. You'll leave with nothing, and everybody will know exactly why."

I looked at Beau. "Anything to add?"

He finally met my eyes, and he had the gall to look wounded. Gentle. Like a man putting down an old dog.

"Jo, you've been a good partner. Genuinely. But Kacey and me — it's real. And she's giving me a son." A pause. "You were always so consumed. With the songs. With Junie's appointments. Maybe if things had been different—"

Maybe if things had been different.

I paid off his debt. I wrote his voice. I made payroll out of my savings for twenty-one months while he learned to golf with radio programmers. I funded the Bronco he handed his pregnant mistress on the same morning he canceled his own daughter's medical coverage.

And our marriage died because I took our deaf child to too many doctors.

Charlene leaned in, lowering her voice like she was doing me a kindness.

"And sugar — about the girl. All this medical drama. That's a Calloway problem now, not a Rhodes problem. Frankly, the deafness comes from your side. Bad wiring runs in certain families. Kacey's people sing. You understand."

Bad wiring.

My daughter was thirty feet away in a pink gown with electrodes on her scalp, and this woman was discussing her like a truck with a bent axle.

Something inside me went very, very still. The same stillness I'd felt in the gravel lot.

I closed the folder.

"I'll sign," I said.

Beau's head snapped up. Charlene blinked, then bloomed into a triumphant smile.

"Well. Finally. Sense."

"I need until Friday," I said. "To review it properly. I'd hate to miss any details."

"Friday's the shareholder meeting," Beau said quickly.

"Then it's a big week for both of us."

"Of course, of course." Charlene was already standing, smoothing her jacket, victory perfuming the air. "See, Beau? I told you she'd be practical. She always was the practical type."

They left without asking my daughter's name.

In six years of marriage, Charlene Rhodes has never once said the word "Junie" out loud.

I stood alone in that room and watched them walk to the elevators — Charlene laughing at something, Beau already texting, probably Kacey, probably "it's done, babe."

Then I took out my phone and called a number I'd kept for exactly this day.

"Nadia Cross."

"It's Josie. Remember the file I sent you two years ago? The one you called my 'break glass in case of husband'?"

A pause. Then, softly: "He finally did it, didn't he."

"He finally did it."

"Say the word and I file everything Monday morning."

I watched the elevator doors close on my husband's smiling face.

"File it all," I said. "The publishing license. The lease. The Blackbird stake. Every page."

By Friday, Beau Rhodes would own nothing but his last name.

He just didn't know it yet.