Chapter 16: The Empty Studio

Beau's POV

By Tuesday night the house was so quiet I could hear the refrigerator.

I had spent the day in a motel on Nolensville Pike with the curtains shut and my phone face-down on the bed.

Now I stood in my own front hall with my keys in my hand, and nothing looked wrong at first.

Then I walked into the studio.

Her console was gone, and so were her good headphones and the stool with the cracked seat she wouldn't let me replace.

Four pale squares on the carpet showed where the rack cases had stood for five years.

I stood in the middle of them for a long time.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I looked at it.

It was my manager, who had already told me he was done.

It was the boot company's lawyer, and the radio station, and a man from Lantern I'd never met.

There were over two hundred messages, and not one of them was from Marlo.

I had called her thirty times and the calls went nowhere. She had blocked me, or turned the phone off.

I sat down on the studio floor with my back against the wall, where I used to lean and watch her slide a fader up when a take was good.

For five years I thought her quiet was agreement.

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