Page 47 of The Single Dad Grump Next Door

“Come on,” he says with a soft laugh. “We’re almost home.”

Chapter Sixteen: Gabe

Afew days after my bizarrely pleasant evening walk with Alina, I feel like I’m losing my mind with restlessness. I haven’t run into her again, but that’s mostly because I’ve shut myself away in my music room.

Not that anything productive has actually come out of that.

At least my daughter is having a better time than me in Mermaid Shores. After just a couple weeks, she’s made a dozen friends and has a packed social schedule thanks to it. She definitely gets her natural charm and extroversion from her mother.

On the rare day that I actually get Wren all to myself, I decide to take her to a local music shop that I used to stop by when I came here as a teenager.

Wren had announced at breakfast, “Daddy, Ireallywant to play the drums.”

She was stabbing her pancake with unnecessary vigor, syrup dripping off her fork like she was trying to reenact a scene from a horror flick.

I had to hold back a sigh. “Drums?”

Suffice to say, percussion is loud. And while I wouldn’t change a single thing about my kid, part of me does wish she’d be more interested in slightly quieter instruments. The harp, maybe. Or the clarinet.

“Drums are cool,” she had argued, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “And I like loud stuff.”

“You don’t say,” I muttered. For a kid who’d spent the last two weeks carrying around one of my tambourines like it had become another appendage, this felt like a natural escalation of that.

Really, it’s my fault for buying her that child-sized drum kit. I had wanted to encourage musical exploration and self-expression—all that stuff you should be nurturing in young minds. I’d also given her a child-friendly guitar and a plastic flute, but it was the instrument that required a lot of smacking and banging that tugged on her attention with the most fervor.

So, now, here we are… walking into The Siren Song. It’s a surprisingly sleek and modern shop, tucked between a sports gear rental place and a café near the far end of Main Street. Wren practically bounces through the door, her sneakers squeaking against the polished wood floor.

“Hi there!” chirps a young woman behind the counter, who seems to be in the middle of tuning an electric guitar the color of toxic waste. Her dyed pink hair is pulled back into a bun, and she’s wearing a T-shirt that says,Grrrls to the front!

For some reason, I find myself grinning at the stranger. I’ve always liked when people are so blatant and unapologetic about how they present themselves to the world. It’s taken me about two seconds to deduce that this girl probably loves Bikini Kill and likely has some very strong opinions about pop punk.

What you see is what you get. More people should be like that. Including myself, honestly.

“Hello,” I answer, but Wren is already darting toward the back of the store where a gleaming red drum kit is displayed.

“Someone’s excited,” the woman chuckles.

“Yeah, that’s putting it lightly.”

I follow after Wren. She’s running her fingers over the shiny red finish of the bass drum, eyes wide with wonder.

“Can I try it?” she asks, looking up at me with a hopeful grin.

The staff member overhears, and is already making her way over to us with the neon guitar slung casually across her back. “Of course! Let me grab some sticks for you, kiddo.”

“Yay!” Wren pumps her little fists in the air.

I laugh to myself and take a step back, giving her space to approach the drums without too much fatherly hovering. This isn’t about me, after all. Even if I’d rather she fall in love with literally anything other than percussion, it’s whatshewants that matters.

I remember when I chose the violin, after all. It had felt more like the opposite—like the violin had chosen me.

I was barely younger than Wren, and my parents had taken me and my brother to a yard sale down the street. Mr. Weiss, the high school music teacher, had just retired and was clearing some so-called “junk” out of his basement. That junk had included three vintage electric pianos, a saxophone, a trombone, thirteen harmonicas, four acoustic guitars… and a violin.

When my mom saw that I was fascinated by it, she tried to discourage me in that gentle, kindhearted way that adults tend to do when they think a child might be walking head-first into a situation that’s too complicated for them. But then Mr. Weiss came over and showed me how to hold it between my shoulder and chin, and how to angle the bow over the strings to get a pure, crystal-clear sound.

He ended up letting it go for ten dollars.

My parents thought I might be fascinated by the thing for a few weeks, then move on to something else. That’s how my brother operated, after all. He was on a mission to become a jack-of-all-trades, but I only wanted to be the master of one thing.

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