Page 46 of Pretend and Propose

Honey chews on her lower lip and I dislike the expression on her face, still excited and only tinged by a hint of worry.

I grab the map and roll it up roughly. I’d like to burn it before it can suck Honey into a wild goose chase. “Why in the world would you ever want to do what Dad wants? He wasn’t exactly a model of the way to live your life.”

“Wait.” Honey grabs my hand and points to some writing on the back of the map. It’s Dad’s handwriting, and the title is clear, ‘Chet Weston’s Riddle.’

“Nope.” I continue to roll. “Don’t even go down that path.”

I shove the map back in the cardboard container, grab Dad’s letter, and slide that inside too.

“Let’s leave it up here, at least,” Honey says. “It’s part of our family legacy.”

Against my better judgment, I lean the cardboard roll against the wall.

As we leave the attic, my bass in my arms, Honey glances back twice at that damn map. I’m going to have to warn the others to keep her away from it.

I head to my room, with plans to hide that map as soon as I’m sure Honey’s left for work or at least downstairs, but I sit down, put my fingers to the strings of my bass and forget about everything else.

It takes me a bit to get it tuned, but once I do, it’s like no time has passed since the last time I played. My fingers move over the strings as though they remember better than I do and familiarsongs drift out. I’d forgotten how much I love playing, how much I love the music.

Chapter Twelve

Daisy

Asoft knock at my door startles me and I press my hand against the strings of my bass to quiet the squawk my grasping fingers had dragged from them.

My fingertips are sore with a familiar ache from when I was learning to play, before I’d built up the calluses that would protect me.

“Come on in,” I call.

The door opens and Goldy sticks her head in. “I’m in for the night. I’m not sure when all of us will be home at the same time again. Want to practice for this event Honey signed us up for?”

“Is there no way to get out of it?” I try to sound less eager than I feel.

Goldy grimaces, but I see the disappointment in her eyes. She’s expecting me to let them down, to choose work over my family. “Do you want to be the one to tell Honey no?” She turns and leaves.

“I guess not.” I’m not sure she even hears me.

My sisters are in the living room. They’ve arranged their five couches, which they brought when they moved in, into a semi-circle. Goldy has her fiddle, Honey has her guitar, Clover has her mandolin, and Daisy has her banjo.

I freeze in the doorway, suddenly dizzy, as I see the younger versions of them superimposed over the women they’ve become.My throat tightens and I swallow hard, pushing the emotion down and away.

This is why I didn’t want to come home. Books are safe, real life is filled with emotion and memory and stakes, and it’s just all too much sometimes.

I can’t sit to play my bass, so I stand near the end of one couch and get set up.

“Let’s start with some old favorites,” Honey says. “I’ll give you the music for the songs I’ve written and we can try those next time.”

“Since when do you write music?” Dani asks.

Honey shrugs. “I think I always have, really, but after we stopped playing together, I played on my own. Making up songs just comes naturally to me. Eventually, I took some classes and started writing them down.”

“You still want me to sing?” Asher walks into the living room, phone in hand. “I think I’ve found that first song you mentioned.”

We play and Asher sings. He’s got a decent voice, deep and rich. He doesn’t always hit the right notes, but he’s close enough for practice. We don’t play the song perfectly and there are lots of starts and stops, but I can’t remember the last time my heart felt so full or that I got so lost in music, in creating and listening, just slipping into another zone, not unlike the one I go to when I read a good book.

Except in this zone, I’m not alone.

I’m not sure how long Noah is in the room before I notice him, but he doesn’t say a word, just listens while my sisters and Asher and I play and joke and argue about which song to do next.

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