Page 16 of August Lane
Luke stared at the divorce papers. He’d added his notarized signature months ago and had waited in vain for her to do the same. Staying married to him made her feel safe. Until today, he didn’t feel right pressuring her to sign after everything he’d put her through. But that was before David Henry offered to rescue his career.
“So, you heard about Jojo Lane,” he said.
She flipped her hair back and said, “I’m happy for you,” in a tone that implied the opposite. The scathing reviews of her “Invisible” cover had only recently subsided. She probably thought Jojo singing a duet with her husband would cause another round of criticism. “But the news was surprising. I didn’t know you were being considered for her concert.”
Charlotte had always resented his secrets. But she had never been completely comfortable with the reality of the man she’d married. The few stories he’d shared about his messed-up childhood had made her inconsolable. And he’d never even revealed the worst of it.
Luke rubbed his forearm out of habit, tracing the raised ridges of an old scar he’d covered with tattoos. “I didn’t know, either,” he reassured her. “Her manager approached me after a show.”
“This sounds like a…” Charlotte seemed to be struggling to think of a softer word than scam. “I mean, are you sure this isn’t some publicity stunt? To bring all that ‘Invisible’ stuff up again?”
Luke noticed how carefully she avoided saying what had happened: that she had been accused of cultural appropriation for covering a song about a Black woman’s experience. Luke knew she’d added the song to her album because it was one of her mother’s favorites. Natalie Turner had died from heart disease while Charlotte recorded the album, and the optics of her choice hadn’t penetrated her grief.
Luke found out about it when everyone else did, and the slick, country-pop production had bothered him the same way it ultimately bothered every other critic who knew the soulful original. He didn’t saythat to Charlotte, though. She wouldn’t have listened. They didn’t talk about race, not like that. Not in ways that implied being married to him made her more or less culpable.
“The show is in Arcadia, during the music festival,” Luke said. “That’s why Jojo thought of me.”
A new concern creased Charlotte’s face. “I guess that makes sense.” She paused. “Do you think that’s wise?”
“Getting paid? Yeah, I do.”
“You haven’t been back there in years. With good reason.” She picked up one of the water glasses her assistant had placed in front of them and took a large gulp, as if the conversation had a taste she was eager to wash away. “Are you sure you can deal with it without—I mean, you know what happens when you drink.”
She fell silent, probably waiting for him to echo her concerns. Charlotte controlled her life through avoidance. If she’d had her way, he would have spent the last decade hidden in one of her luxury guest suites so no one could speculate about the status of their marriage. She knew that if Luke returned to Arcadia, he’d be walking through an emotional minefield. She probably had nightmares about him relapsing and drunkenly outing her before she was ready.
“That won’t happen,” he said, because he knew his triggers. He’d also developed coping strategies that came in handy when he couldn’t avoid them. One was listening to the will of the universe, the way it held up a mirror and forced him to face his mistakes. He couldn’t work the steps without truly working them. He couldn’t accept another windfall that fell into his lap without trying to become a man who deserved it.
“Stay away from your mother,” Charlotte advised. She’d met Ava only twice, but the few stories he’d shared had been enough to convince her he should block the woman’s number.
“I’ll get a motel room,” Luke said. His bank account disagreed, but he’d deal with that later. “It’s just a few rehearsals, then the show.”
Charlotte didn’t seem convinced, but she sighed in defeat. She looked down at the divorce papers. “All this stuff is scary, right?”
He knew she wasn’t just talking about him anymore. They’d both seen the punishment for making waves in country. Radio stopped playingyou. Your singles vanished from the charts. If Charlotte came out, it would be inspiring to the fans who’d already sensed the sapphic tone of her recent releases, but it would feel like a slap in the face to others, the fans who looked to her music for nostalgia about an ignorant way of life.
She’d also have to face the same questions he did from people who were confused by her refusal to switch genres. Luke had once performed at an HBCU that asked him to sit on a panel to discuss lynching imagery in country music. He’d stumbled through three different explanations about why he’d chosen to sing country before he finally heard the real question they were asking: How could you love this thing that hates you?
It made him think of August:Because that’s what I do.
He envied Charlotte despite her current misery. There was an obvious light at the end of her tunnel. She could wake up beside the woman she loved, decide she’d had enough, and choose the happy ending right in front of her. “You’ve got Darla,” he reminded her. “Whatever happens, you’ll be okay.”
“And what about you?” She leaned in and met his eyes. “Are you going to be okay?”
He was slow to answer. For him, okay was survival: a roof over his head, another show lined up, enough money for food and clothes. But now, sitting next to Charlotte, a woman with more to lose than he’d ever have in his lifetime, it felt like a cowardly way to live. “Maybe. All I can do is try.”
The show was in two months, enough time to make things right with August. He’d been eager to believe that David Henry’s offer was some reward for years of toiling at the bottom, when it was really this. A reckoning.
August woke up hungover and queasy, with Birdie’s ghost chasing her out of bed. It was Sunday morning, and her grandmother had never let her skip church. “Saturday sins won’t seek their own forgiveness,” she used to say, before yanking the bed covers away. August could never argue with that, even though today it felt like making empty promises to Santa for a bicycle. No amount of praying would erase the fact thatshe’d wrestled in the dirt with Shirley Dixon. The scratches on her face were begging to be used as an excuse to hide in her apartment. But again, Birdie’s voice clattered in her ear. “That’s coward’s thinking. You’ve been a lot of things, August, but never that.”
Her grandmother had been the only person who considered August’s special brand of bravery a virtue. Everyone else thought she was just stubborn. Or worse, ornery, like a wild horse too stupid to know it should break. “Comes from her father” they would say, as though August’s mother hadn’t devoted twenty-five years to a genre that had to be publicly shamed into claiming her. But Jojo was famous. A homegrown success story that lifted all their ships. Everything people didn’t like about August was blamed on her father, Theo King—a man so despised she heard the church threw a celebratory BBQ when he disappeared.
The list of things August knew about her father wasn’t very long. Theo was the youngest of the five King boys, one of two who were still alive. His father had run numbers. His mother had disappeared so suddenly that it made the town uneasy, constantly on the lookout for a hasty burial ground. During his brief relationship with her mother, he taught Jojo how to play piano, even though she refused to do it, even to this day.
The list of things August didn’t know about Theo was too long to care about. But there was one thing in the middle, a truth everyone avoided, reflected in how people looked at her and, more often, in how they didn’t. It said she shouldn’t be here. Theo King had done a bad thing, one of the worst they could imagine, and it had robbed them of their beauty queen. If Jojo had never had August, she wouldn’t have lost that historic crown and embarked on a singing career they initially found confusing and still occasionally considered embarrassing.
Birdie told August that Theo was the coldest man she’d ever met. “He had eyes that would make you shiver in July” was how her grandmother put it. “Nothing ever got to him.” It was the only trait of his that August had tried to emulate. Emotional control. Immunity from the elements. August had divided her life into two lists: things that needed immediate attention and things that didn’t matter. For the last decade, the first list had a single item: Birdie’s welfare. The other list held everything else: Her lack of a career. Other people’s opinions. Anything resembling alove life. The mental wall she’d erected between them was a dam that occasionally leaked. That’s what happened when Birdie died. The only item on her list that mattered had vanished and left a space she didn’t know how to fill. Terry was the closest thing within reach, a warm body to grind herself numb against. It didn’t work. Instead of shoring up the dam, more of the other list leaked through. Like how long it had been since she’d laughed at anything. Or how horrible it felt to hear I love you from a man you didn’t trust.
Luke’s imminent return would cause a flood.
