Page 12

But this gesture? Ben returning the locket was simply... decent. He’d studied me for a long beat when I gave him the Kate Green name last night, but he’d gone along with it. Did he know who I was? I had no idea, and right now that didn’t matter. He had retrieved this because he thought it might matter to me, not because it would look good on Instagram. I reclasped the chain around my neck, tucking the gold oval under the collar of the oversized T-shirt I’d slept in—one Ben had handed to me. It hung nearly to my knees and smelled like him: rain, soap, and something earthy, like cedar.

"Okay," I muttered to the empty room. "Coffee. Coffee is the mission."

I opened the bedroom door and limped into the living area. I hadn’t spared a glance at the place last night. The cottage was cozy—an efficient layout with a kitchen along one wall and a sitting area with a gray couch and a TV mounted on the wall. Everything was neat. Not just clean but aligned. The remote controls were parallel to the edge of the coffee table, and the coasters were stacked. It felt like a showroom for a bachelor who optimized his life for efficiency.

The kitchen was equally austere, but I spotted the coffee maker on the counter. It was a Mr. Coffee—a standard, plastic, twelve-cup drip machine that probably cost twenty dollars at Walmart. I stared at it. For the last five years, my coffee had come from a machine that looked like a chrome spaceship, cost more than a Honda Accord, and the resulting brew was always produced by someone besides me. I hadn’t operated a drip machine since I was eighteen years old and working the morning shift at a diner in Tennessee.

"You can do this," I muttered. "You are musically gifted. You write bridge transitions that make grown men cry. You can operate a Mr. Coffee."

I found the bag of coffee grounds in the cabinet above the machine, opened it and took a long sniff. It was a dark roast, the kind that smelled like it would put hair on your chest. I opened the top of the machine and searched the drawers for a filter. Silverware, towels, a surprisingly organized junk drawer—finally, I found a box of white, ruffled paper filters and stuck one in the basket. Now for the math. How many scoops? I stared at the glass carafe and shrugged. I grabbed a spoon and started dumping grounds into the filter. One. Two. Three. Four. Was that enough? It looked like a lot of dirt. Maybe one more for luck. Five.

I filled the carafe with tap water and poured it into the reservoir, splashing a significant amount onto the counter in the process. I hastily wiped it up with a paper towel, terrified of leaving a water ring on Ben’s pristine granite, then hit the switch. The machine gurgled, hissed, and spat dark liquid into the pot.

Success.

While the coffee brewed, I turned my attention to food. My stomach was making noises that sounded like a dying animal, so I opened the refrigerator. It was nearly empty—a carton of eggs, a gallon of milk, a six-pack of beer from some place called Tidal Hops, and a jar of grape jelly. The bachelor energy in this house was strong. I grabbed two slices of bread from the cabinet and shoved them into the toaster, pressing the lever down. While I waited, I leaned against the counter, peering out the window above the sink. The view was wild. The cottage sat tucked into the back of a larger property, bordered by a dense wall of trees with tangled roots that disappeared into black water. Mangroves. I remembered them from the drive down. The rain was falling in a steady, gray drizzle, turning the landscape into a watercolor painting of greens and browns. It was beautiful in a prehistoric, menacing sort of way.

The smoke hit my nose before my eyes caught the haze.

"Shit!" I spun around. A thin wisp of gray smoke was curling up from the toaster slots. I lunged for the cancel button, hammering it with my palm. The toast popped up, black as charcoal and smoking.

"No, no, no," I cried, grabbing a dish towel and waving it frantically at the toaster. I glanced at the ceiling and the smoke detector right above the fridge. "Don’t you dare. Do not beep. Do not summon the fireman."

The last thing I needed was Ben rushing in here in full gear because I couldn’t operate a toaster. I grabbed the burnt slices with my fingertips, hissing at the heat, and threw them into the sink, turning on the water to drown the evidence. The smoke dissipated, and the detector remained silent. I slumped against the counter and stared at the soggy, blackened bread in the drain.

I was thirty-one years old. I had a net worth that would make a banker blush. I had won three Grammys. I had performed for royalty. And I couldn’t make toast. The realization hit me with a wave of humiliation so strong it burned my eyes. This was what Nash had done to me. He hadn’t just controlled my career—he had infantilized me. He had removed every obstacle, every chore, every basic life skill until I was completely dependent on the ecosystem he controlled. In leaving him, I hadn’t just lost my producer. I’d lost my ability to feed myself.

"Pathetic," I whispered.

The coffee maker let out a final gurgle. I poured a mug of the black sludge, took a sip, and immediately gagged. It was strong enough to strip paint off a wall, tasting like battery acid and despair. I drank it anyway. I drank it because I made it, and right now, that was the only victory I had.

After the breakfast disaster, I retreated to the bathroom near my room. It was small, tiled in white subway tile with gray grout, and smelled faintly of bleach. I locked the door, even though I was alone in the house.

"Yikes," I said to my reflection.

The woman staring back looked like she had been tumbled in a dryer on high heat. My face was pale, devoid of the contour and highlighter that usually gave me cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass. There were dark circles under my eyes—real ones, not the goth chic look my stylist sometimes tried to emulate. Then there was the wig. The Karen had seen better days. It was matted on one side from sleeping, and the synthetic fibers had frizzed in the humidity, giving me the appearance of a startled cat.

I reached up and gripped the edge of the cap. My scalp was itching ferociously, and I wanted to rip it off. I wanted to run my fingers through my real hair, to feel the air on my skin. I peeled the edge up an inch. A flash of platinum blonde appeared—the signature Sutton Vale shade that cost five hundred dollars every three weeks to maintain. I stared at that strip of blonde. If I took the wig off, I was her. I was the star. I was the commodity.

If Ben walked in and saw the blonde hair, the game was over. He would recognize me. Even if he claimed to live under a rock, the platinum hair was a trademark. The dynamic would shift. He wouldn’t be the stoic protector anymore. He would be the guy who realized he had a winning lottery ticket sitting in his guest house. He might sell the story. He might call the cops. He might try to help by calling my management. Or worse, he might treat me differently. He might get weird and deferential, or stare at me with that hungry, consuming gaze I saw in every fan’s eyes.

I pulled the wig back down, adjusting the elastic band until it sat low on my forehead. "Kate Green. Wedding singer. Bar Mitzvah entertainer. Struggling artist."

It fit. It was safe. Ben would believe it because he was a logical man, and logic dictated that Sutton Vale didn’t drive Hyundais into ditches or burn toast in strangers’ kitchens. Logic dictated that Sutton Vale was in a mansion in LA or a penthouse in New York, not wearing dirty sweatpants on Dove Key. I could be Kate the wedding singer. I could be a little bit pathetic. I could be broke. I could be messy.

"You’re a method actor now," I told my reflection. "Commit to the bit."

I washed my face with a bar of Dial soap I found in the shower—another sensory shock compared to my usual twelve-step skincare regimen—and brushed my teeth with a spare toothbrush I found in the drawer, still in its wrapper. I needed clothes. My sweatpants were dry but stiff with dried mud at the cuffs. My shirt was Ben’s. I walked back into the bedroom and checked the dresser and closet, finding only men’s clothes. I grabbed a pair of gray athletic shorts with a drawstring and another T-shirt, this one black with the logo of a building company on the pocket: Ashworth Architecture. When I pulled the shorts on, they hung low on my hips. The hem hit below my knees, but if I tied the drawstring tight enough, they stayed up. I tucked the oversized shirt in and sighed. I looked like a child playing dress-up in her father’s closet.

"Fashion," I deadpanned, striking a pose. "It’s called grunge. Look it up."

The cottage grew smaller as the morning wore on. I paced the length of the living room, my limp getting slightly better as the ibuprofen kicked in. I needed a phone. I needed to call Mindy. I needed to know if Nash had released a statement, if the press was swarming the crash site, if my car had been towed. The silence that had been so beautiful at 8:00 AM was becoming heavy by 10:00 AM.

Stay inside, the note had said. I looked at the front door, then the blinds. "Technically, the back porch is part of the house. It’s an attached structure."

I unlocked the back door and stepped out. The humidity hit me like a warm, wet blanket. The air was thick and smelled of salt and thick, decaying vegetation. The rain had stopped for the moment, but the sky was a bruised purple-gray, heavy with unshed water. The porch was small, just a wooden deck with peeling paint and two white plastic Adirondack chairs that had seen better days. I sat in one, stretching my bad leg out in front of me.

The view was incredible. The mangroves formed a dense, tangled wall about twenty feet away, their roots arching out of the dark water like spider legs. Beyond them, through gaps in the canopy, I could see the open water of the Gulf, choppy and slate-gray. A white heron stood on a piece of driftwood near the water’s edge, motionless as a statue. I took a sip of my terrible coffee and leaned my head back against the plastic chair.