“You said you used to write with your friend. Maybe you need a new partner.”
“A new partner being…”
He pushes to his feet.“Give me two minutes.”
Then he’s gone. Three minutes later, he comes down the stairs, my notebook in one hand. I wonder if my family would have noticed a notebook floating across the house had they been inside. Paige would have proof of her haunting theory.
Finn returns to the couch, sitting cross-legged beside me, and lets the notebook fall onto the cushion between us.
His fingers pass through the pages once before he gets ahold of them, flipping to a page with one of many versions of the song I’ve been trying to finish for months. This version has the additions he left to the lyrics.
“I’ve been thinking about this song,” he says.“And I know sad is your style, but what if this song isn’t?”
I frown at him. He continues, “I mean, look at these notes. You start softer, more melancholy, but the first notes of the chorus—” Hejabs a finger at the notes.“You’ve got these minor chords, and that gives you that melancholy sound, but what if it shifts, like…like a sad story that gets happier as it goes on?”He scans the room.“Can you find a pen?”
Begrudgingly, I peel myself out of my divot in the couch, returning with a ballpoint pen.
“Okay, so you’ve got minor chords to start.”He points to the paper, and I scrawl down the notes.“Now, what if you start with two major chords? Then you’re back down to minors. First verse stays down, but the second starts to pick up. And by the end, you’re more hopeful than mopey.”
At my silence and what must be a stricken expression, Finn clears his throat, sitting back. “I mean, it’s only an idea. Feel free to tell me to shut up,” he says.
“I think you’re onto something,” I say.
My mouth goes dry, and my heart rate jumps. For a moment, I feel as if I’m stomping on Harper’s grave. This was always our thing. But before it was our thing, it was my dad’s and mine. Music was always collaborative. And though part of me wants to throw up, the other part is starving for this feeling.
In every quiet room I hear echoes of you
And search for phantoms in vain
I’ve no clue how to breathe again
How to let the sun return after the rain
And I’ve built these walls so high
With bloody hands, brick by brick
Forgetting that up above, all along,
there’s been a sky
I’m looking for a song in the dark
A melody whispering in the wind
and through each quiet night
I’m trying to get back in the fight
Time weaves a tapestry of moments
Threading pain into passion, tangling my befores
into my beginnings
A symphony of a life, still unlived
The song is far from complete, the page full of missing notes and lyrics, but it’s more progress than I’ve made in months.
