“Fine. The driver played old music again. Like, ancient.” She shudders playfully, then glances toward the open garage door. “Is Lucky home?”
Before I can answer, a sound drifts through the air.
Soft. Low. Melodic.
A single guitar chord. Then another—slow, testing, as if feeling out the edges of a memory.
Lily tilts her head. “That’s… new.”
Not entirely. We’ve heard music from that house before—muffled, background, the kind of playlist noise you assume comes from speakers someone forgot to turn off.
But this—this is different.
This is live. Her.
Then her voice joins the guitar. Unpolished, intimate—like something she only sings when she thinks no one’s listening. The sound threads through the yard, slips into the garage, and hits somewhere low in my chest, where I don’t usually let anything reach.
Lily’s eyes go wide. “She’s terrific.”
I swallow. “Yeah.”
I don’t mean for it to come out soft. It just does.
Lily slides off the stool and pads to the garage window, pressing her palms to the smudged glass. “Dad… she’s outside. On her back patio. Sitting on the step with her guitar.”
I move beside her before I think about it—slow, cautious. Lily shifts to give me room.
Through the window, I can just make out Lucky on the small concrete patio behind her place. Cross-legged. Guitar balanced against her knee. Head bowed slightly, hair spilling forward. She strums again—hesitant but steadying—and hums a few bars.
Something in me loosens. Or breaks. Hard to tell.
Lily whispers, “Can I go listen?”
Her voice is full of that bright, earnest hope kids have before the world teaches them to mute it.
I nod. “Stay in the yard.”
She’s already halfway down the property. “I will!”
I watch her cross the grass—slow, polite, giving Lucky plenty of space—while that voice drifts through the warm air, turning the whole backyard into something softer than it was a minute ago.
Lucky doesn’t see me watching.
Good.
Because I’m not sure how to explain the way everything inside me shifted the moment she started to sing.
Chapter 7
Lucky
Theguitarrestswarmagainst my leg. The sun is soft. The air is quiet. And for the first time in months, I feel… almost human.
I hum a line. Then another.
It wobbles. I breathe through it.
The moment the sound leaves me, something inside loosens—like a knot I’ve been carrying under my ribs finally remembers how to uncoil.
