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I can’t see much of his face, but his tight-lipped frown is unmistakable. Beneath his hat, the wind ruffles the hair at the nape of his neck. He looks every bit a brooding cowboy. I hate that I don’t hate it. In fact, this image of him would probably make a great album cover, sending all his fans swooning.

Kash works his jaw as he strums a few notes while he sings the melody. The sound carries down the row of Leyland cypress that separates us. It’s not a bad chord progression, but it could use a little something more. I wonder how it would sound if he started on the relative minor chord?

Kash must sense that it’s not working, too, because he stops playing with an angry grunt and bangs the side of his fist against the body of the guitar.

Clearly, it’s not going well.

A spark of sympathy flares to life, but I smother that real quick. Even after everything I’ve recently discovered, Kash Murray doesn’t deserve a bit of sympathy from me.

November 7

Kash has a harmonica.

Fantastic.

The wheezy, whiny notes coming from it make me cringe as I busy myself with restocking the Festive & Free stand.

He sits across the courtyard at one of the café tables near the cocoa stand, elbows on his knees, doing his best to scare away our customers and any unsuspecting wildlife in a fifty-yard radius. Thankfully it’s a slow day, or I’d feel compelled to break my self-imposed vow of silence and ask him to move along.

The longer he attempts to play, the more it sounds like there’s a dying duck being tortured in the courtyard. I’m sorely tempted to march over there and show him how to play it the right way just to save my eardrums.

A note blares from the harmonica and the hair on the back of my neck actually stands up. Of all the days for me to have left Mom’s old MP3-player headphones on the charger. I’m irked that they don’t have the same battery life as my phone, which I’ll probably have to start carrying around again so I can listen to music for more than an hour at a time.

Eventually, Seth will lose interest in posting meme-ified videos of my set, right? He can’t be upset about the science fair forever, can he? A low growl gets caught in my throat, drowned out by the squawking harmonica.

As frustrated as I am with Seth and his social media posts, I’m even more peeved that Kash is sitting over on that wrought iron chair watching me work as he murders “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

I can’t take it anymore.

“Use your diaphragm,” I call out loud enough for him to hear.

The harmonica gives a final bellow, and then there’s blessed silence.

“What?” His voice is low and gravelly when he responds, like he hasn’t gotten much sleep. He sounds a lot like he did when I delivered dinner to him that first night, when he was just a dark shadow.

“Your diaphragm,” I repeat, pointing to my midsection. “Don’t huff and puff like the big, bad wolf. Control your breathing as you play.”

“Oh,” he says, his eyes widening. He glances from me to the harmonica and back again.

Trust me, dude, I’m equally surprised I’m talking to you, let alone helping you out.

He breathes deeply and brings the harmonica to his mouth. This time when he plays, it’s slightly better.

“Thanks,” he says.

I nod and walk away.

November 9

I’m still not ready to pull my lyric notebook down off the shelf, but the temptation to write music again in earnest is too great to ignore. Just because I don’t want to work with Kash (and he doesn’t want to work with me) doesn’t mean I don’t want to be a working songwriter at all. Even if I don’t have any co-written songs to turn in by the end of the year, it couldn’t hurt to come up with some material for Barry. It’ll do me good to flex my writing muscles.

I grab a fresh paisley-print notebook from the shelf, a blue gel pen, and my guitar case. There’s an old hayloft in the big red barn that’s a good, out-of-the-way spot to write without interruption.

The ladder is less rickety than it looks, and it only takes a minute for me to make my way up to the loft. We mostly store extra holiday decorations and old junk Dad doesn’t want to throw away up here. There’s even an antique Portland Cutter sleigh, with a black body and red tufted upholstery, that I like to curl up in to write.

Small windows set high in the barn’s walls let in enough ambient light that the space is cozy like a cocoon, not creepy like a crypt. Dust motes float through the air, and I breathe in the comforting old barn scent.

Settling into the sleigh’s bench seat, I turn sideways and prop the empty notebook on my leg in case inspiration hits and I need to jot down notes. After running through some warm-up scales, I play a few bluegrass-y verses of AJ Lee & Blue Summit’s version of “Tear My Stillhouse Down,” and then I get to work.