Chapter 3 Seraphina
SERAPHINA
Iwas as nervous as a cat all day, looking at the clock while trying to write.
Finally, I gave up and took a shower, spending extra time on my hair and makeup, then standing in my walk-in closet wondering what I should wear.
I wanted to look nice, but not like I’d tried too hard.
After all, this was a guitar lesson, not a date.
At twenty after four, I got a text from Tyler saying practice had run late but he was on his way. The house was already clean because of my wonderful housekeeper who came once a week, but I found myself straightening things that didn’t need straightening. Fluffing pillows that were already fluffed.
Hunter knocked at four-twenty-seven. I drew in a deep breath and opened the front door. He was in a gray henley and dark jeans, guitar case in one hand, his hair slightly damp.
“Hi.” I smiled, forgetting for a moment that I should invite him in.
“Hey.” He smiled back and my stomach fluttered. How could anyone be this good-looking? Or smell this good? “How are you?”
“I’m fine. Tyler’s running late,” I said, stepping back to let him in. “Baseball ran late. He’ll be here by quarter to.”
“No rush.” He stepped inside and looked around my front room, his gaze lingering at the sight of the Pacific out my windows. “Your home’s beautiful.”
“Thank you. I tore down the original house and had this one built. I never in a million years thought I’d live in a place like this.”
“It suits you.”
“Lila helped with the decor.” I closed the door behind him. “Do you want a tour?”
“I’d love one.”
I started in the front room The whole back wall faced the Pacific, floor to ceiling. A view that always took my breath away, even after all the years I’d been lucky enough to live here.
“What a view,” Hunter said. “Perfect for a writer.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that beauty begets beauty,” Hunter said, his gaze turning toward me, his eyes intense.
I flushed. I don’t know why. It wasn’t like he was talking about me. He was talking about my house.
“I bought the property a few months after I first moved here. The original cottage had one small window facing the water. I used to press my face against it like a child.” I laughed a little.
“When the Netflix deal came through, I told the architect I wanted to be able to see the ocean from everywhere.”
“It’s spectacular.” He’d turned back to look at the water, the late afternoon light breaking flat and silver across it.
Then he turned to the room itself, seeming to take in the white built-ins flanking the fireplace, the shelves filled with books arranged by theme rather than alphabet.
The white sofa with its pile of gray and cream pillows.
The knit throw draped over the arm, the coffee table with its stack of novels and a vase of lilacs I’d cut earlier that day.
He moved toward the bookshelves. “Where are yours?”
“Oh, I keep copies in my office. My publisher always sends me a box and I never know what to do with them. Dorian has me sign some for his shop, which always makes me feel kind of strange.”
“Strange how?”
“Imposter syndrome,” I said.
“Oh, yeah, our old enemy.”
“Right?”
Hunter moves over to my white brick fireplace, peering at a small framed photograph I’d taken of Tyler at his first baseball game—age six, gap-toothed, filthy and triumphant. He picked up the photo, looking at it closely. “He was adorable back then.”
“Still is, actually. He’s always been the easiest person in the world to spend time with. He’s like my dad. Easy-going but compassionate. Fiercely loyal. Old soul.”
“Lucky,” Hunter said.
“I know.” I gestured toward the kitchen. “ Come see the kitchen.”
Lila had given me the kitchen of my dreams, even though I didn’t cook as much as I should.
Dark hardwood floors that gleamed even in the gray afternoon light.
White cabinets to the ceiling with their original brass hardware, glass fronts on the uppers so you could see the pale dishes stacked inside, contrasted with black marble countertops Three pendant lights hung over the island.
A window above the farmhouse sink looked out toward my unruly seaside garden, wild sweet peas beginning their slow climb up the trellis.
Hunter set his guitar case down just inside the doorway and put both hands on the edge of the island, leaning in to look at the marble, then his eyes moved over my six-burner cooktop. “That’s a work of art.”
“Do you like to cook?” I asked.
“Yeah. Margaret insisted I learn when I lived with them and it became a passion of mine.”
“I’m sorry, who’s Margaret.”
He looked at me. “She and Wes are old friends. I’m staying in a cottage on their property. She’s kind of like my mom. It’s a long story.”
“I didn’t mean to pry.”
“No, it’s okay. When I was ten, my mom left and I never really saw her much after that.
My dad was … a session musician … often worked long hours.
So Wes, my dad’s best friend, and his wife Margaret semi-adopted me.
That was before they moved out here. Margaret wanted to be back on the West Coast. She followed Wes out to Nashville when they were young.
Wes was a big producer and manager back in the eighties and nineties.
You probably know his work without knowing it. ”
“I didn’t realize you were living on their property.”
“That’s right. In addition to their gigantic house, they have a cottage on the property.
When I found myself at loose ends, I decided to come stay with them for a while.
Or, I should say, Margaret pretty much insisted I come.
She has a lot of opinions. The cottage has been ideal.
I have privacy, but they’re never far away.
Margaret’s love language is feeding people, so I haven’t gone hungry. ”
“They’re your family.”
“That’s right,” Hunter said. “Like your ladies.”
“And what about your dad? Is he still with us?”
“No, he died when I was in my mid-twenties. At work. Not a surprise, since that’s where he spent the most time. Heart attack. He went suddenly, guitar in hand.”
“I’m sorry. That must have been hard.”
“It was. We had a complicated relationship.” He tilted his head to the side, studying me. “What about you? Are your parents living?”
“No, I lost my mom when I was too young to even remember her. My father raised me alone.” I paused, fighting against the tears that often came when I spoke of him. “My dad was my hero. Died when Tyler was five. Right before I moved here.”
“I feel like there’s more to that story,” Hunter said.
“Yes, but I might need a glass of wine if I’m going to tell you about it.”
“Raincheck, then?”
I smiled at him, nodding. “Sure.”
“What about your office? Do I get to see that on our tour?” Hunter asked. “I have to admit, I’m curious about the place you create magic.”
“You’ve earned the right to see it, since you’ve read my whole catalog.” I walked in that direction, with him right behind me “It’s even clean today. Sometimes, at the end of the deadline, not so much.”
I pushed the door open, wondering what this room where I spent so much of my time looked like to Hunter.
The wall of windows faced the ocean, with my writing desk positioned so the horizon was always in my sightline.
My yellow sweater slung over the back of my chair. “That’s my lucky sweater. Super ugly.”
“Do you have to wear it to write?” Hunter asked, completely serious. He understood the rituals of a writer.
“I could write without it, but I don’t want to.”
We shared a grin, before he noticed my turntable.
It sat on the low credenza against the interior wall.
The record collection filled the shelf below it in the same order my dad had kept them, sorted not alphabetically but chronologically, the way he’d acquired them, so that flipping through them was something like walking through his life.
Hunter crossed to it and crouched down, beginning to flip through the records.
I leaned against the wall and watched him.
“Good collection,” Hunter said, standing.
“It was my father’s.” I crossed my arms loosely. “He left it to me when he died. His whole life’s right there.”
“Are they organized chronologically?”
“Yes, how did you guess?”
Hunter shrugged one shoulder. “I know music. Not much else, but I know music.” He crouched again, flipping through the eighties section. “My dad played on a lot of these. You want to see his name?”
“What? Yes, I’d love that.”
He pulled a Dale Whitmore record from the shelf, the cover art burnt orange with long shadows in the way that era favored. He turned it over, scanning the liner notes. His finger found what he was looking for and he held it up for me.
I leaned in to read the small print of the liner notes.
Ray Sloan: lead guitar.
“That’s my dad,” Hunter said. “You’d be surprised how many records he played on in your collection.
Session musicians were known as the best in the business, and he was the best of the best.” He was already moving through the shelf again, pulling a Bobby Dean Harlan record that had been one of my dad’s favorite albums of all time. “He’ll be on this one too.”
“We listened to that one a thousand times,” I said. “My dad loved it. It’s strange to think your father’s guitar was playing in our house every night.
Hunter was quiet for a moment, still crouched, one hand resting on the edge of the shelf. “I think about that sometimes. My dad played on all these records, and no one but music geeks would notice. I write songs that no one realizes are mine, except for people in the business.”
“Do you mind that? Being behind the scenes?”
He shook his head. “Nah. I’ve just felt lucky to be able to make a living doing what I love.”
“Then why did you leave? Why are you … tending bar?”
“You say “Already Gone” is your favorite song, right?” Hunter asked.
“That’s right.”
“Then you know why I’m here.”