Chapter 9 #2
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.
Not his whole body, he was still sitting in his corner, still holding his untouched glass of Jameson. But his head had lifted. His eyes, which usually stared at nothing, were focused. On her. On the music.
He sat perfectly still, like a man caught in a spell he couldn't break. His face held an expression she hadn't seen before. Not closed off. Not empty. Something else. Something that looked almost like pain, but softer. More fragile.
Recognition. That's what it was. He recognized something in the music.
Merritt's voice wavered, just slightly, but she kept playing. She didn't look away from him, and he didn't look away from her. For one long moment, they were connected by something invisible. A thread of sound stretching across the room.
Then the song ended.
The spell shattered.
Ray stood up so fast his chair scraped against the floor. He dropped money on the table, more than usual, she noticed, and walked toward the door. He didn't look at anyone and didn't say goodbye.
But as he passed her, close enough that she could have reached out and touched him, he paused. Just for a heartbeat. Just long enough for her to see his jaw clench, his hands tighten into fists at his sides.
Then he was gone, out into the soft evening air, the door swinging shut behind him.
Merritt sat frozen on the stool, her guitar still warm in her lap. Her heart was pounding. She didn't understand what had just happened, but she knew it was important. She knew something had shifted.
Justin appeared beside her, his face carefully neutral. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” Her voice came out hoarse. “Did you see that?”
“I saw.”
“What was that?”
Justin shook his head slowly. “I don't know. But I've never seen him react to anything. Not in two years.” He paused, looking toward the door where Ray had disappeared. “Whatever you just did, it reached him.”
Merritt looked down at her guitar, at her hands still resting on the strings. She thought about what Paula had said. About burdens that couldn't be lifted. About patience and distance and the limits of caring.
But she also thought about music. About how it had saved her, all those years ago. How it had given her a way to feel things she couldn't put into words.
Maybe Ray had that too, once. Maybe he'd lost it, the way she'd lost it after her mother died. Maybe the music had reminded him of something he'd buried so deep he'd forgotten it was there.
She didn't know his story. She didn't know what haunted him or why he came to this bar every night to sit alone with a drink he never touched.
But she knew something now that she hadn't known before.
He could still feel. Somewhere underneath all that silence, all that stillness, there was still a man who could be moved by a song.
That had to mean something.
She set her guitar aside and stood up, her legs unsteady beneath her. Crocker was watching her from behind the bar, his expression unreadable.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “For playing.”
“Thank you for asking me.”
He nodded once and turned away, busying himself with something behind the register. But she saw him wipe his eyes with the back of his hand, quick and private, before anyone else could notice.
The bar returned to its normal rhythm. Ed and Margie finished their drinks and left. The young couple paid their tab and wandered out into the night. Dottie stayed until closing, nursing her wine and chatting with whoever would listen.
Merritt worked through the rest of her shift on autopilot. Her body moved through the familiar motions, clearing tables, washing glasses, restocking napkins, but her mind was elsewhere.
She kept seeing Ray's face. That moment when the music reached him. The way his eyes had focused, really focused, for the first time since she'd known him.
And then the way he'd fled, like a man running from something he couldn't bear to feel.
At eleven, she climbed the stairs to her apartment and sat by the window, looking out at the water. The moon was high and full, painting silver ribbons across the Gulf.
She thought about calling her father. It was late, but he'd still be awake, reading in his chair by the window. He'd want to hear about the music, about playing in front of people again. He'd be proud of her.
But she didn't reach for her phone. Not tonight.
Tonight, she just sat with the silence and the moonlight and the memory of Ray Maguire's face when the music found him.
Tomorrow, she'd figure out what to do next.