Shocked, he stared fixedly at the road. Tessa Lawrence's violin prodigy daughter even knew what country music was?
The next song came on, and this time Makayla sang along. Quietly at first, like she was testing whether he'd tell her to stop. When he didn't, her voice grew stronger. She had perfect pitch and a natural instinct for harmony that was startling—she'd find the third or the fifth above the melody and hold it effortlessly, as if her ear couldn't help building a more interesting version of whatever she heard.
"You've got a great voice," he said.
"My music teacher says I have a good ear." She paused, picking at a thread on her jeans. "I play violin."
"For how long?" he asked with genuine curiosity.
"Since I was three," she answered matter-of-factly. "I'm in the advanced ensemble at the middle school even though I'm only in 5th grade. That's where I go after school Mondays and Wednesdays."
"What do you do Tuesdays and Thursdays?"
"Tutoring on Tuesdays. I'm learning Latin, French, and algebra. Thursdays are violin lessons with Professor Cohen in Apple Pie Creek." A pause. "Mom wants me to audition for the youth symphony in Bozeman next year."
"Is that what you want?"
A long pause. Outside the window, the valley stretched toward the mountains, wide and golden in the afternoon light.
"I want to learn to fiddle," she said quietly. She sounded guilty. As if it was a shameful secret.
He glanced at her. She was staring out the window, her face carefully neutral in a way that reminded him so sharply of Tessa it made his chest ache. This kid had learned how to compose her face and moderate her voice before she'd learned to ride a bike.
"Aren't violin and fiddle the same instrument?"
"Yes." She looked at him with serious brown eyes. "But they're not the same thing."
He understood. More than she could know, he understood. The same tool used differently. The same talent put in the service of someone else's expectations versus your own joy.
"I bet you'd be a heck of a fiddler," he said.
Her voice dropped into the guilty tone of a confession. “I’ve been watching You Tube videos on how to fiddle.” A pause. “It’s really cool.” Another pause. “But there’s some stuff I can’t figure out how to do.”
“Have you asked your violin teacher to show you how?”
Makayla looked horrified. “He’s a classical violinist. He was the concertmaster of a major orchestra in Europe.”
“He also retired in Montana where fiddling is a lot more common than classical violin. Give the guy a chance. He might surprise you. “
She stared at him thoughtfully for a moment. Then she broke into big grin and cranked the radio louder.
During his next call, a boring examination of a bull a farmer was thinking about using for breeding, Makayla stayed in the truck. When he came back, she’d drawn him a picture with colored pencils on a piece of notebook paper. It was a house with a wraparound porch that looked enough like Fern’s to be identifiable. And on the porch were three people sitting side by side in rocking chairs. A big one, a medium one, and a small one. A family.
He managed to thank her without his voice cracking, but it was a close thing.
He didn't switch the station back after he dropped her off at home. In fact, before he even got to his next stop, he'd changed all six radio presets to country stations.
And he hung the picture on his refrigerator with magnets.
That night, he ate standing at the counter again. Setting the table for one felt too lonely even for him. While he chewed and swallowed, he tried to think about anything other than Tessa and Makayla.
He was doing it again. Getting sucked into the fantasy that he could somehow have a family of his own one day.
Lexi's voice slithered into his mind, uninvited and unwelcome, the way it always did when he let his guard down. He wasn’t meant to have a family. It went without saying that, if he had no time for a woman, he surely had no time for children.
He was noticing things he had no business noticing. The way Tessa applied Dolly's medicine three times a day instead of two. The way she typed notes on her phone with the ferocity of a general preparing for battle. The way she looked at Makayla through the kitchen window—protective and terrified and proud all at once, a mother trying to hold on and let go at the same time.
Fern had told him Tessa came from money. Old, back East money. She looked like it—classy and expensive. Her daughter wore plaid skirts, velvet headbands, and played violin. Tessa had been raised in a world that looked at men like him as the help.
