“I have nerves of steel. Plus, I always do what I say I’m going to do.”
“I’m going to open wine,” Seraphina said. “And then let’s listen to music. I’ll show you my dad’s favorite albums. But first, I’m going to run upstairs and change into jeans. Make yourself at home in my office. It’s even tidy today.”
“I’ll be sorry to see the dress go, but I understand,” I said, smiling.
“I’ll wear the dress again.” She smiled back at me before heading upstairs.
When I opened the door to her office, I paused for a moment. The scent of her perfume hung in the air. The bookshelves held copies of her editions but also many others. Everything from romance to mystery and historical fiction. I ran my hands over the back of her chair, wondering what it felt like to sit at her desk every day and make something out of nothing. That was the beauty of writing. An author could make any kind of world they wanted to explore. It was kind of like magic.
I turned toward the record cabinet. She must have eight hundred records packed onto the shelves.
Seraphina came in with two glasses of wine. She’d changed into a pair of loose jeans and a light sweater. Bare feet. Toes painted red. She handed me a glass, then lowered herself to the floor beside me, her back against the credenza, close enough that her shoulder was warm against mine.
“Pick a record,” she said.
I flipped through and picked a Cole Bridges record. He was a big-voiced Tennessee singer who’d had four number ones between ’92 and ’96. I pulled out the liner notes and found my dad’s name right away. “My dad played on this one.”
“Cole Bridges,” she said softly. “My dad loved him. He said his voice soothed him when he was agitated or nervous.”
“Yeah, he had that kind of voice.”
“That one was his favorite of all the Cole Bridges albums. I can’t tell you how many times he played it.” She pulled out another of Cole’s albums. “But this one’s my favorite.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s a good one,” I said. “’Broken Road Home.’ 1994.”
“That’s right. Good memory.”
“Put it on,” I said.
She opened the turntable and carefully slid the record out of its sleeve. “My dad was very particular about his records. I was eight when he finally said I was old enough to learn how to do it properly. No touching except for the rims. Which was tricky for small hands, but I did it because I wanted the privilege to play them.” She put the record in place and lifted the needle onto the edge. Seconds later, the room filled with Cole Bridges’ voice singing a song about the whispering pines of Tennessee with my father’s guitar accompanying him.
She pushed up the sleeves of her sweater and held out her arms. “Goosebumps every time.”
I looked down at the cover. The art had a nineties quality, with a wide sky, empty highway and a man walking away from the camera.
“I can always tell it’s my dad by the way he bends the notes. He could make the strings sound like every human emotion on the planet.”
Seraphina sat back on the floor, her wine glass cradled in both hands. “I love that description.”
I settled beside her, my legs stretched out in front of me, our thighs inches apart. I swear I could feel an electric spark between us. And the scent of her floral perfume almost made me dizzy with desire. “When I was a kid I wished he was more of a show up at my baseball games type of guy. But that wasn’t him. He was happiest at work, obviously, and we rarely connected. Butwe shared a love of music. That’s when I felt the closest to him. Music was his great love.”
“I feel like that about my work too. Other than Tyler, obviously. But the work itself, even though it can be hard, always makes me feel like who I’m supposed to be. But I’ve worried that I don’t give enough of myself to Tyler. He takes care of me when it should be the other way around.”
“You take care of each other,” I said. “But I get what you’re saying. Creating can be so all-consuming. It was for my father anyway. Wes was different that way. He could put it aside when he got home to Margaret. I don’t know how he did it, but, when he was with us, he was always just present and interested.”
“My dad was like that too.” She smiled, her eyes far away. “He was a great teacher. At his funeral, all these former students came up to me, each of them sharing a story about how he was there for them when they really needed him, without judgment. He had this way of leaning in, tilting his head, nodding or asking a question, that made the kids want to open up to him. It was the same for me, obviously. He was my whole world until Tyler came. Then it was the two of them and the words on the page. When I lost my dad, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to write again. I was so heartsick and sad. I thought maybe I should go back to teaching high school English. But I was wrong to have worried. The grief helped me to be a better writer. I had more insight into a lot of things, including how lucky I’d been that he was my dad, even though I lost him too early.”
“Did you become a teacher because of him?” I asked.
“Yes, he encouraged me to major in English and get a teaching degree. So that’s what I did, hoping to someday make a living as a writer.”
“Did you father believe in you?”
Her face lit up. “Oh yes. He was my biggest fan. Even though I got rejected a lot, he never gave up on me. He would always say,‘Not if, but when. You just have to be patient. Do the work. The rest will follow.’ He was right.”
The record moved through its first side, my dad’s guitar strings bending notes into emotion. We chatted, then listened for a while, chatted some more. When one record ended, we put on another. She told me more about her life growing up in Alabama. How close she and her father had been. How hard it was to lose him. How thankful she was that he saw her first books published. “He was reading a Dick Francis book the day he died. I found him in his chair, with the book open on his chest. At first I thought he was asleep. He looked so at peace, with this slight smile on his face. But he was only in the middle of the mystery. It bothered me he didn’t know how it ended. Who the murderer was. Grief is weird that way—how you can focus on one detail.”
“One that doesn’t seem important until you’ve lost them.”
