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He looks tired. He’s in a gray UMS hoodie, his hair is pushed back, and he smells the same as always, which makes me very glad that I’m looking straight ahead at the road rather than at him.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.”

He looks at me, and my heart lurches forward. I want to hug him. I want to kiss him. I want to take him in my arms and tell him everything is ok. I sit on my hands.

“I wanna take you somewhere, is that ok?”

He pulls away from the sidewalk.

We drive in silence for a few minutes, then he parks up at Mountain Springs General Hospital.

“Can I just tell you some things? From the beginning, if that’s okay.”

I look at him.

“Yeah,” I say. “Okay.”

He nods once, then says, “My dad smashed my guitar when I was twelve.”

I turn to look at him. He’s looking at his hands on the steering wheel.

“It was pretty scary. And I was pissed.” He pauses. “He was just done with it. I’d been playing for about a year, just teaching myself off YouTube, and I was obsessed with it. You know, the way kids are when they find something they love. I’d come home from school and go straight to my room and play until someone made me stop. Same chords for weeks, trying to perfect it. Drove everyone crazy in the house.

“And one evening, on a Tuesday—he had golf on Tuesdays—he came home in a bad mood because he’d played badly. So he just came into my room and he just... took it off me. And he said, Callum, this is enough now, you need to focus on school, you’re not a fucking songwriter and I said something back—I don’t even remember what—and he—” A pause. “He put it down on the floor. He didn’t throw it. He put it down quite carefully and then he stood on it.”

I wince, and the car is very quiet.

“He said he’d consider getting me a new one, only if I got straight A’s in my end-of-year exams.” Cal’s jaw moves. “He meant it as a deal, but it was really just more punishment. He knew I wouldn’t get top grades, so I knew he’d never get me another guitar.”

I don’t say anything. There isn’t anything to say that would fit in the space this has opened up.

“I didn’t tell anyone,” he says.

“What happened?” I say. “How did you start playing again?”

The corner of his mouth twitches. “Mabel happened.”

* * *

He tells me about her with a smile on his face the whole time.

Mabel. His mother’s older rebel sister, estranged from the family for years for loving women. Who had, despite the estrangement, stayed close to her nephews, showing up quietly on birthdays and at school events.

She had worked, for fifteen years, in the administrative office of Cal’s high school, so it was easy to stay in contact.

“She was just there,” he says. “Every morning when I walked in. She knew everything— she knew all the teachers, knew which classrooms had the best heating in winter, knew who was having a rough time before anyone else did. The kids loved her.” A pause. “I loved her. She seemed to look out for me. I didn’t know what she was actually doing until later.”

“She came to find me,” Cal says. “In the lunch line. Very casually. Callum, I’ve signed you up for something on Thursdays. I’ll pick you up after school. Don’t tell your parents. And I said, signed me up for what? And she said, don’t worry about it, just bring your hands.”

“I thought it was going to be cooking,” he says. “Or first aid. Something sensible and Mabel-adjacent.”

“And it was a guitar lesson.”

“It was a guitar lesson.” He shakes his head. “She’d already spoken to the teacher. She’d already paid not just for that week, for the whole term, in cash, because she didn’t want to give me a reason to back out.”

“I told my dad I was doing the school newspaper.” Cal snorts. “Every Thursday for two years. He was… he was actually pleased. Thought I was developing a practical skill.” He scoffs. “Mabel waited. For the whole hour. In the parking lot, with a book and a thermos of tea, in all weathers. And on the way back, she’d ask me what we’d worked on, and I’d play her bits—she’d hold it up and just listen, very seriously, like she was grading something. And then she’d say yes, that’s the one, or I think that bit needs more work, and I’d be furious with her because she doesn’t even play and somehow, she was always right.”