Then Ivy came in for her solo verse. They reached the bridge and their voices blended for the first time. The outro came soft and unhurried.
The last chord faded.
Nobody spoke for a moment.
“That’s a hit song right there,” Wes said.
“Absolutely beautiful,” Margaret said.
“You have to imagine Jack’s voice instead of mine,” Hunter said.
“I love your voice,” I blurted out.
Ivy beamed. “Let’s play the other one for them.”
“It’s called ‘Or Something Like That Anyway,’” Hunter said. “First song I wrote in Willet Cove.”
“Seraphina’s song,” Ivy said, mischievously.
Hunter strummed the opening chord, and Ivy’s pure voice sang the first verse. A note on the table. A woman leaving. The wordsonly boytold me it was about his mother.
The second verse—another note, another woman leaving, the same wound in a different handwriting. Dana leaving him for someone else.
And then the third verse.
She left a note in the winter air
Thousands of words and none of them rhymed
But I knew what she was saying
That aching hunger for love
I kept those pages near
Reached for them in the dark
Found the missing notes between the lines
All those things we never say
Those quiet confessions of a lonely heart
Or something like that anyway
I stopped breathing.It was about me. About my books that he’d read throughout a winter. The chorus came and then the bridge.
Can you teach me how to stay
I felt those six words enter my body. Were they for me? It seemed impossible, yet I knew. It was a question for me and only me.
I thought,Yes, I can teach you to stay.
The song didn’t end so much as drift away, the last chord and Ivy’s voice dissolving into the quiet room.
We all clapped, as if we were sitting in The Meadowlark Café listening to our own private concert with two of the most talented people on the planet.
“I knew Ivy’s voice was just right for it,” Hunter said, grinning, his large frame draped over Georgia.
