Seraphina had left me a note too. Only this one had been written across sixty novels. I’d felt as if she were speaking to just me in those books, even though that was impossible, since I’d not met her yet. Probably all of her readers felt the same way.She wrote this for me.When, in fact, she never knew who picked up her book and devoured it in one sitting.
Regardless, her books had been a life line this winter. A reminder that love was the only thing worth fighting for. The only purpose on earth. Her romances.
Thousands of words and none of them rhymed.
I was running faster now without deciding to.
I learned once that Michelangelo had believed the people he carved into stone were in fact waiting for him to release them from captivity. A good song often felt the same way, as if it had lived in me for some time, ruminating, forming, until it was ready.
By the time I hit the path back up to the property my lungs were burning and the song continued to unfold. I wrote down everything that had come to me, before getting into the shower.
I stood in the shower and let the hot water run over me, with more phrases landing like birds on my shoulder.
But maybe I’m not so sure no more.
Or something …
I made coffee,then grabbed Georgia from her stand by the window and my notebook with blank musical sheets. I pushed open the screen door to the porch. The fog had lifted, bringing a soft spring sky and sunshine that filtered over the yard. I sat on the porch step with my coffee beside me and Georgia across my knees and I started to play.
The chords came without hesitation. My fingers found the progression easily. I worked through verse one, adjusting a word here and there and jotting down the musical language of the song on the music sheet. Two hours later, I had what I thought could be a pretty decent song.
I played the whole thing through twice without stopping, my voice a little hesitant at first, but eventually loosening. I had a decent voice—nothing like Ivy—but good enough for a songwriter.
I didn’t hear Wes come across the garden. I looked up, and he was standing at the garden gate with his coffee mug, silver hair catching the morning light. He’d been listening.
“Working on something new?” Wes asked, sitting down a few steps below me.
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“I knew it would come eventually.”
“You might have. I wasn’t sure.”
“Play it for me again?” Wes asked.
I did so.
I played the new song for Wes, singing in my mediocre voice. When the last note drifted into the sea air, Wes cleared his throat. “It’s good.”
“Yeah?”
He nodded slowly, looking out toward the bluff rather than at me. “Where did you find this one?”
I looked down at Georgia. “It came to me after something Seraphina said the other night.”
“That right?” Wes took a sip from his coffee. “She writes words without any rhymes?”
“Not every song comes from personal experience, you know.”
“Sure.”
“But yeah,” I said. “There’s something about her. Can’t explain it.”
“That’s how it usually works,” Wes said. “She has a boy, though. Be careful of his heart.”
A twinge of pain tapped my chest. “I know a little bit about a boy’s heart. And about parents who leave. I don’t take it lightly.”
He only nodded, taking another sip of his coffee.
