Page 31 of Island Girl

“I do,” she said carefully. “A little.”

Crocker nodded once. “June used to love live music. Before she got sick, we'd drive over to Fort Myers on Friday nights. There was a little jazz club she liked. We'd sit in the back and listen for hours.”

He paused, his eyes going distant the way they sometimes did when he talked about his wife. Merritt waited, not wanting to interrupt.

“After she passed, I couldn't stand the sound of it,” he continued. “Music reminded me too much of her. So I kept this place quiet. No jukebox, no bands, nothing but Jimmy Buffett on the speakers because she hated Jimmy Buffett and it didn't make me think of her.”

Merritt felt something catch in her throat. She understoodthat kind of grief. The way certain things became unbearable because they held too much memory.

“But lately I've been thinking.” Crocker ran his hand along the top of the stool, smoothing the wood. “Maybe it's time. Maybe she'd want there to be music again. She always said this place needed more life.”

He looked at Merritt, and for the first time since she'd met him, she saw something vulnerable in his face. A question he wasn't quite asking.

“Would you play something?” he said. “Just for tonight. Just to see how it feels.”

Merritt's heart hammered against her ribs. She thought about saying no. She thought about all the reasons she wasn't ready, the rust in her fingers, the fear in her chest, the weight of performing for people who expected something from her.

But then she looked at Crocker, this man who talked to his dead wife every day and carried her memory like a sacred thing. And she couldn't refuse him.

“Okay,” she said. “Let me get my guitar.”

She climbed the stairs to her apartment on shaky legs. Her hands trembled as she lifted the Martin from its case. She stood there for a moment, breathing slowly, trying to calm the storm inside her.

You can do this. You've done it before.

But that was a long time ago. Before her mother. Before everything.

She walked back downstairs before she could talk herself out of it.

The bar had a few more people now. Ed and Margie at their table. A young couple near the door, tourists by the look of them. Dottie at the bar, watching with interest. And in the corner, alone as always, Ray Maguire.

Merritt settled onto the stool Crocker had placed for her. Thewood was smooth and warm beneath her. She adjusted the guitar in her lap, checked the tuning by ear, and took a breath.

Justin caught her eye from behind the bar and nodded. Encouragement. Support.

She looked down at her hands on the strings and began to play.

The first song was an old one. “Landslide.” Not the Fleetwood Mac version, but her own arrangement, which was much slower and softer. She'd played it for her mother dozens of times in those final months. It had become a kind of prayer between them, a way of saying all the things that words couldn't hold.

Her voice came out soft at first, tentative. But as the song went on, something loosened inside her. The fear faded. The self-consciousness melted away. There was only the music, rising up through her fingers and her throat, filling the room with something tender and true.

She finished the song and the silence that followed felt different. Not empty, but full. Like the room was holding its breath.

Then Ed started clapping, and Margie joined him, and the spell broke into something warmer. Applause. Smiles. Dottie raising her wine glass in a toast.

Merritt felt her cheeks flush. She ducked her head, embarrassed and pleased.

“Another one,” Crocker said from behind the bar. His voice was rough. When she looked at him, his eyes were wet. “Please.”

So she played another. And then another. Songs she'd known for years, songs that lived in her bones. She lost track of time, lost track of everything except the music and the way it moved through her.

She was halfway through “The Water Is Wide” when she felt it.

A shift in the room. A change in the air.

She looked up, her fingers still moving on the strings, and saw Ray.

He had turned toward her.