Page 37 of Island Girl

She was on her lunch break, eating a salad in the staff room, when her phone buzzed.

Justin's name flashed on the screen.

Her heart stuttered. Justin didn't call during the day unless something was wrong. Unless something had happened with Ray.

She answered on the second ring. “What is it? Is he okay?”

“He's fine. He's okay.” Justin's voice was calm, steady. “I'm not calling because something's wrong, Paula. I'm calling because something's right.”

She set down her fork, her appetite gone. “What do you mean?”

“He spoke to her. Last night. To Merritt.”

Paula sat very still. The noise of the staff room faded away, the hum of the refrigerator, the chatter of her coworkers, the clatterof dishes in the sink. All of it disappeared, leaving only Justin's voice and the impossible words he'd just said.

“He spoke to her.”

“Two words. 'Good music.' That's all. But Paula, he hasn't spoken to anyone in that bar in two years. Not once. And last night, he walked past her and he said those two words.”

Paula closed her eyes. She felt the worry in her chest shift, making room for something else. Something fragile and dangerous.

Hope.

“What happened?” she asked. “What changed?”

Justin told her. About Merritt playing guitar at the bar. About Ray staying through the whole set instead of leaving early. About the way he'd watched her, really watched her, like he was hearing something he'd forgotten existed.

“She's not pushing him,” Justin said. “She's keeping her distance, like you asked. But the music…I don't know, Paula. The music reaches him somehow.”

Paula pressed her free hand to her forehead, trying to slow the thoughts racing through her mind. Ray and music. Of course. Of course it would be music.

She remembered him at sixteen, teaching himself guitar in their parents' basement. He'd played for hours, fingers raw and bleeding, determined to get it right. By eighteen, he was good enough to play at local bars. By twenty, he had a voice that made women cry and a presence that filled whatever room he walked into.

Julie had fallen in love with him watching him play. She'd told Paula that once, years later, when they were drinking wine and being honest in the way that only ex-sisters-in-law could be. “The first time I heard him sing, I knew I was going to marry him. I didn't even know his name yet. But I knew.”

That Ray, the one who played and sang and lit up rooms, had died somewhere in the desert. The man who came back wassomeone else. Someone hollowed out and haunted, carrying things he never talked about, waking up screaming from dreams he refused to explain.

Paula had watched him try. She'd watched him fight to be the man he'd been before, for Julie, for baby Heather. She'd watched him lose that fight, one day at a time, until finally he'd made the choice that broke everything.

He'd left. Walked away from his wife and his daughter and his whole life. Not because he didn't love them, Paula knew he loved them more than anything, but because he'd decided they were better off without him. Safer without him. He'd looked at his hands and seen weapons. He'd looked at his nightmares and seen dangers he couldn't control.

So he'd removed himself from the equation. Cut himself out of their lives like a surgeon excising a tumor.

Julie had been devastated. Heather had been four years old, too young to understand why Daddy wasn't coming home. Paula had tried to explain it to her, years later, but how do you explain something like that to a child? How do you tell a little girl that her father loved her so much he left to protect her from himself?

You couldn't. So Paula hadn't. She'd just been there, as much as Julie would let her, watching Heather grow up in photos and phone calls and occasional visits. Watching Ray disappear further and further into the ghost he'd become.

And now this. Two words. Good music.

“Paula? You still there?”

“I'm here.” She opened her eyes and stared at the wall of the staff room without seeing it. “Justin, I don't know what to make of this.”

“Neither do I. But I thought you should know.”

“You did the right thing. Thank you.”

She hung up and sat there for a long time, her salad forgotten, her mind spinning.