Rob, Elaine, Corey . . . and Delta. I’ve been here since darkness fell, sitting in the shadows, listening. I found Dominic easily, but instead of staying on his ship, my feet somehow carried me here, and Dominic, being the man he is, followed me without question. I have been sitting in the darkness for hours, listening to Delta. Ava is with her, sitting off to one side, wearing obviously borrowed clothing, looking sad but momentarily distracted.

  Delta has that effect, I’m discovering. She’s . . . mesmerizing. Put that guitar in her hands, and she transforms completely. She opens her mouth to sing, and she’s a whole different person. Rob, Elaine, and Corey all seem to realize this, seem to understand there’s something special about Delta, about the way she sings. They all manage to shine as musicians, but none shine as brightly as Delta. She doesn’t just shine, she . . . mierda, I don’t know to put it. She glows from the inside out when she’s singing.

  They’ve done so many songs I don’t know how they know them all, where the memory for all those chords and words comes from. Now the song they’re doing ends and the last notes fade into silence. No one applauds, because they’re all rapt, waiting for more.

  Rob, mandolin in hand, nudges Delta’s foot with his. “You have any original songs?”

  “Yeah, but—” she starts.

  “Do one for us,” Rob suggests, cutting in over her protest.

  At this, the gathered crowd howls and cheers, but Delta just shrugs.

  “I haven’t performed my own material in a long time,” she says, stroking the strings of her borrowed guitar.

  “So?” This is Corey, the dreadlocked drummer. “You’re a fuckin’ rock star, D. You got this. Let’s hear something you wrote.”

  Ava leans close to Delta, whispers something, and Delta argues back in a fierce whisper. This goes on, back and forth, until Delta finally hisses in frustration.

  “Fine! I’ll do the damn song if it means so much to you. Jesus, Ava, you’re so damn persistent!”

  Ava does a cutesy smile. “What else are little sisters for?”

  There’s one of those little clips on the end of the guitar, a capo I think it’s called, and Delta fastens it to a precise spot on the fretboard, strums, adjusts the position of the capo minutely, and tries a few cursory chords. Then she adjusts a tuning peg, a different one, strums again, and nods. The tune is immediately familiar to me, and probably to everyone else in attendance; we’ve all heard it on the radio a million times.

  “Um . . . a long time ago, I used to live in Nashville. I had this dream of being a famous songwriter and performer. Well, that didn’t pan out, exactly. But I did sell a couple songs. You may have heard this one.” She plays a few chords and laughs abruptly. “I guess anyone could sit here and claim to have written this song, but I swear I really did. I think you can probably google the copyright info if you don’t believe me, but . . . shit, it’s my song, and I’m gonna play it. I’ve never played this for an audience before so this is a first for me.”

  A pause.

  “This is a song called ‘Another Bar, Another Mic,’” she says.

  Delta plays then, a familiar melody that’s so simple, so compelling. She plays it a little slower than the artist on the radio, but to me it seems to work better this way. More . . . mournful, more haunting.

  After a minute or two of playing the melody, Delta begins to sing. Before, singing other people’s music, she shone, she glowed. Singing her own music? Jesus Cristo, she . . . she’s on fucking fire.

  * * *

  “Truck stop diner outside Miami

  Got my good jeans on, favorite cami

  Guitar in the front seat beside me

  and another gig behind me

  Got a bad boy habit

  an addiction I just can’t beat

  Burns hotter than whiskey neat

  Wash my hands

  but it don’t wash the bad boy off me

  So I slide on in, get another coffee

  I know it’s gonna hurt

  but that don’t stop me

  They do me wrong

  and I put ’em in a song

  * * *

  Every night it’s the same old thing

  Another bar, another mic

  Another hey pretty thing

  Lemme hear you sing

  Another hey little mama,

  Let’s cut the drama

  Another town and one more gig

  Another beer and one more swig

  Another hotel bar and a good lookin’ liar

  Another one-night stand and a drunk dial

  * * *

  I’ve got another gig tomorrow

  Another night to sing my sorrow

  because I’m just a six-string singer

  and a first-light leaver

  I’ll sneak out while you’re sleepin’

  And creep out while you’re dreamin’

  I'll love you hard and leave you reachin’

  I’ll love you fast and leave you weepin’

  * * *

  Truck stop diner outside Miami

  Got my good jeans on, favorite cami

  Guitar in the front seat beside me

  and another gig behind me

  Got a bad boy habit

  an addiction I just can’t beat

  burns hotter than whiskey neat

  Wash my hands

  but it don’t wash the bad boy off me

  So I slide on out, get another coffee

  Take it to go and hit the highway

  This is my life and I live it my way

  I know it’s gonna hurt

  but that don’t stop me

  They do me wrong

  and I put ’em in a song

  * * *

  Every night it’s the same old thing

  Another bar, another mic

  Another hey pretty thing

  lemme hear you sing

  Another hey little mama,

  Let’s cut the drama

  Another town and one more gig

  Another beer and one more swig

  Another hotel bar and a good lookin’ liar

  Another one-night stand and a drunk dial

  * * *

  I’ve got another gig tomorrow

  Another night to sing my sorrow

  because I’m just a six-string singer

  And a first-light leaver

  I’ll sneak out while you’re sleepin’

  and creep out while you’re dreamin’

  I'll love you hard and leave you reachin’

  I’ll love you fast and leave you weepin’.”

  * * *

  The applause is wild, with scattered whistles and a lot of howling and cheering. I’ve heard that song on the radio so many times, and to think that Delta wrote that. It has her mark all over it, the brutal honesty, the unapologetic bluntness, a hint of self-deprecation and a sense of regret. It’s all her. It’s so her.

  When the applause dies down, eventually, Delta seems stunned. Both at the warm welcome of the crowd, and the fact that she just performed that song. She’s emotional, smiling with her palm flat on the strings, staring around her, just drinking in the moment. There’s someone recording this via cellphone, I notice, and I’m glad this moment won’t be forgotten.

  My heart hurts, watching her. I don’t want to leave, don’t want to miss her, but I know this can’t happen; it can’t work.

  Dominic nudges me. “Best get outta here, Jonny.” His voice is pitched low, so only I hear him. “You’re only dragging it out, brother.”

  I nod. “I know. I know.” Blowing out a breath, I stand and ignore the way my soul is screaming, reaching out, reaching back to Delta. I walk with Dominic down the boardwalk, away from the fire. Away from Delta. Away from what my heart and my soul and my body all agree is the best thing I’ve ever had.

  Within half an hour, Glory, as Dominic calls her, is bobbing through the gentle swell of the incoming tide, arcing eastward away from the coast and then northward toward Charleston. It’s well after dawn before I find the bunk Dominic told me is mine, and though I’m glad to have the sea under me again and the soothing sound of water around me as I drift off, sleep is slow in coming.

  I’m thinking of Delta.

  7

  I wonder if Jonny thinks I didn’t notice him out there, in the shadows? He sat in the darkness outside the light of the fire for hours, listening to Rob and the rest of us play. There was a man with him, tall, built like a brick shithouse, with long dark hair and a thick beard. Dominic probably, the owner of the boat that rescued Jonny. They just sat there, listening. Jonny thought I didn’t see him, but of course I did. I pretended like I didn’t, just to make it easier on the both of us. But I felt him. I felt his attention. And I feel it now as he leaves, following my performance of my song.

  I want to cry when he leaves, because I know it’s the last time I’ll see him. I don’t cry, though. Instead, I do a song I wrote to myself when I was pregnant with Alex and feeling lonely.

  “I have another one, if you wanna hear it,” I say. There’s applause and a gesture from Rob, who seems to be our de facto leader. “No one’s ever heard this song, except maybe my son, so . . . yeah. Here it is. It’s called ‘Until It’s Gone.’”

  I play the melody, and the words flood through me, like they always do once I start a tune.

  * * *

  “Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry

  It won’t take the hurt away

  It won’t wash the pain away

  Keep your chin up and just hold on

  Just keep breathing till it’s gone

  * * *

  So what if he never loved you

  Who cares if he just used you

  His kisses abused you

  His beautiful body unglued you

  His charm subdued you

  And then he walked away,

  and screwed you.

  * * *

  Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry

  It won’t take the hurt away

  It won’t wash the pain away

  Keep your chin up and just hold on

  Just keep breathing till it’s gone

  * * *

  So what if you’re all alone

  I know, I know

  You’re not made of stone

  It’s okay to be broken

  Take a moment, so what if it’s stolen

  These midnight tears won’t mend you

  This heartbreak won’t end you

  * * *

  Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry

  It won’t take the hurt away

  It won’t wash the pain away

  Keep your chin up and just hold on

  Just keep breathing till it’s gone.”

  * * *

  I breathe through the shakiness and the throbbing heat in my throat, as the last notes quaver in the silence. There’s a long, tense moment of silence, people sitting in the sand staring at me. A few people are crying. Shit, I’m crying. I’m feeling the lonely ache I felt then, and it’s deepened by the pang of Jonny finally, truly walking away. I knew he would, I knew he had to go; I knew he couldn’t and wouldn’t stay. I knew our lives couldn’t fit together. But none of that has any bearing on the fact that . . . I don’t want him to go.

  There’s an explosion of applause, and I realize the crowd has grown somehow. There’s someone at the front of the crowd, close to Rob, Elaine, Corey, and me, and he’s recording us with his cell phone. He has a mini boom-mic attached to his phone to better capture the sound. It feels good to be in front of a crowd again, to have a guitar in my hands, to use my voice, to sing my own songs.

  I feel alive again, after feeling half-dead for so long—more than half-dead . . . mostly dead, barely alive, barely subsisting. Scraping by day to day, focusing on Alex and getting through each shift, each day.

  Rob starts a Punch Brothers song, and I play along with the melody and let Rob sing. His rough and gravelly voice is nothing like Chris Thile’s, but there’s a genuine quality to Rob’s voice that’s distinctive and compelling, making everything he does deeply personal and meaningful.

  Another song, and another one, and then the black of night is beginning to give way to a touch of gray, and people are yawning and falling sleep where they sit in the sand, and Rob announces we’re done for the night. Elaine, once again, vanishes without a word, carrying her cello and bow as if she doesn’t have a case for them, and Corey flits away to mingle with some people he seems to know, lighting up a joint and walking down the beach to smoke it with them.

  Rob stays where he is, fitting his mandolin into a case and latching it. He glances at me as I linger, reluctant to give him the guitar. I’m playing still, picking out an idle melody I’ve had running through the back of my head.

  “You know, Delta, you never mentioned your last name,” Rob says.

  I frown at him, wondering why it matters. “Martin. Delta Martin.”

  He nods. “I wondered.”

  My frown deepens. “What do you mean?”

  He shrugs. “Well, there ain’t that many singer-songwriters out there named Delta, you know? So I figured you had to be Delta Martin.”

  “I’m not following.”

  He grins. “I’m a producer, honey. Cut my teeth in Nashville as a songwriter, switched to producing after selling a handful of songs, and I’ve been producing for going on twenty-five years. I knew I’d heard your voice before about halfway through ‘Jolene,’ but I couldn’t place it. I get a lot of demos, and not a lot of them stick in my memory, but I remember your demo of ‘Another Bar, Another Mic’ as clear as day, and I swear you sound better now than you did then.”

  I laugh. “Thanks, I guess.”

  “I wanted that song and I wanted it bad, but I didn’t have a performer with the chops to do it justice, so I had to let it go. Chapped my ass to let Bruce snap that up.” He shakes his head. “Shit luck for you, too. I coulda made you a star. Bruce was a dipshit and a has-been, and had no eye for talent.”

  He was saying was, because Bruce—the producer who’d bought my song all those years ago—had passed away recently.

  I shrug. “Bruce said he was gonna make me a star, but he didn’t do shit for me. Sold a couple more songs, but it went nowhere. I just . . . I got no traction.”

  “Because Bruce was an idiot, God rest his soul. He didn’t know what to do with you. He didn’t know how to market the honesty in your song writing.” He pauses, eyeing me with an odd look in his eye. “If you don’t mind me asking, what is it you’re doing now, if you’re not in music anymore?”

  I duck my head and dig in the sand with my toe, palm on the strings of Rob’s guitar. “Um. I’m a waitress.”

  “That’s a travesty, Delta,” Rob says. “You are far too talented to be hauling a tray around.”

  I laugh again. “Rob, look at me. Look at what I’m wearing. I’m not just hauling trays, I’m hauling trays at a place that makes Hooters look classy. Washed up doesn’t even come close, okay?”

  He quirks an eyebrow at me. “You still writing songs?”

  I sigh. “Sure. I can’t seem to make myself quit, even though it ain’t ever gonna turn into anything.”

  “How many do you have written?”

  “Songs?” I splutter sarcastically. “I’ve been writing for more than twenty years, Rob . . . shit, I have hundreds.”

  “Hundreds? Like that one you just played?”

  “I mean, yeah. They’re mostly angry, angsty, lonely, and bitter, but yeah.”

  “You should come to Nashville,” Rob says. “We can make another go at it.”

  I stare at him. “Not funny, Rob.”

  He stares back. “Who’s joking? I’m retired, which is why I’m in Florida, but I’m not totally out of the game.”

  I squash flat the hope trying to blossom inside me. “Rob, for real. What am I gonna do in Nashville? Start the whole process all over again, at almost forty, with a six-year-old boy in tow?” I glance at Ava, who’s sitting beside me, listening and watching silently. “And, oh yeah, a sister with a missing husband and a home that’s now leveled.”

  Rob shrugs. “Delta honey, I can’t make you do shit. I also ain’t gonna promise you shit. But, what I will say is that if you give me two weeks in Nashville, record a couple songs for an EP, let me shop it around a little bit, you’ll get traction. It’s a new scene now, babe. Satellite radio, YouTube, and iTunes has changed everything since you were there. Makes it both harder and easier to get your music out there.” He gazes intently at me. “You gotta at least try, Delta.”

  I choke back tears. Shake my head. “That dream is long dead, Rob. It would hurt too much to try only to be rejected all over again. I’m fine with my life.”

  Rob spits in the sand, a violent gesture of disagreement. “Bullshit!” he thunders. “That there is rife, rank bullshit. You are not fine with your life. You ain’t washed up, and your dream ain’t dead. You hit a detour. You gained experience. And yeah, maybe it won’t go anywhere. God knows I can’t see the future and can’t make any guarantees, but I made a career on my ability to know when someone’s got it, and baby girl, you’ve got it. You had raw talent as a twenty-year-old girl and now, as a thirty-some-year-old woman, you have that same raw talent, but you have . . . shit, I don’t know the words for it. Gravity. A sense of sadness and sorrow that makes everything you sing feel more raw and real and deep. There’s something there in the way you perform now, that wasn’t there when you were a girl.”

  Tears trickle down my face, and I can’t stop them. “Goddammit, Rob! You can’t do this to me. You can’t make me want it all over again.” I shove his beautiful classic Martin into his hands and shoot to my feet, stomping across the sand.

  I feel someone following me, and I assume it’s Ava, but I don’t bother looking. I angle into the waves, wade in up to my calves, and I let myself cry.