Every Song He Sang Was Mine novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Donna's Kitchen

Donna makes Linnea say the sums out loud, hums the harmony under a notebook song, and Abel arrives with her old demo reels and a warning: Gil clears the vault on Friday.

My mother made grilled cheese at nine o'clock at night and wouldn't let me eat until I said the numbers out loud.

"Savings," she said, flipping a sandwich.

"Nine thousand, two hundred dollars."

"Infusion."

"Fourteen thousand on Wednesday."

"So you're short."

"By four thousand, eight hundred."

"And that's if I take my medicine and nothing else goes wrong."

She slid the plate across the table.

"Eat. Hungry people make bad decisions, and I've seen your decisions when you're full."

I ate.

The notebooks sat in two stacks by the fruit bowl, spine out, dates up.

She picked up number thirty-one, which was the thin one with the water ring on the cover.

She didn't open it.

"Is this where you put your dad's song?" she asked.

"Page six."

She opened to page six and read it with her lips moving.

When she reached the chorus she hummed the harmony under it, low and a little rough.

She had done that since I was nine and writing songs on the backs of church bulletins.

She stopped at the end of the page.

"He has never sung it like that," she said.

"Dax hasn't sung it at all. He's only heard it once. I played it on the kitchen floor in March."

"No, I mean on the radio. Every song of yours he sings, that's not how it goes in my head."

She set the notebook down.

"I never knew what was wrong. I thought it was me."

"It's the production."

"It's something."

Somebody knocked on the front door.

We both looked at the clock on the stove.

Donna lowered her spatula. "If that's Dax, I'm going to need you to hold my sandwich."

I went to the door with a butter knife in my hand, because it was the closest thing.

Abel Tennant stood on the porch under the yellow bug light.

He had a milk crate in his arms.

His truck was parked at the curb with its hazard lights on.

"You brought a knife," he said.

"It's butter."

"I'll risk it."

He held the crate out. Inside were rows of small reels in white boxes with dates on them.

I knew the boxes before I read the dates.

They were my demos, the guitar-and-talking tapes I had made for nine years, three at my kitchen table and six in the writing room, the way I always did.

I can't sing. I talk the melody and play the chords.

Dax had always said the rough tapes had a charm.

"Where did you get those?"

"The vault. Behind the second rack." He shifted the weight in his arms. "I took what Gil hadn't counted."

"Did Dax send you?"

"Dax thinks I'm at the dentist."

"That's not a no."

"It's a no."

He met my eyes just long enough to say it, then looked at my mother's doormat.

"I'm sorry. I should have said something in there."

"You carried my crate."

"It was heavy."

I almost laughed, and I resented it.

"Abel Tennant," my mother said behind me. "Is that you on my porch with a milk crate?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Get in here before the neighbors start a petition. And wipe your feet."

She pointed her spatula at the floor.

"I'm not as sick as I look. I'm just tired of sweeping."

He wiped his feet for a long time.

My mother had met Abel at the label's first Christmas, six years ago.

He had been a session player then, with a Telecaster and a bad rental in Antioch.

He'd eaten four slices of her pecan pie and told her they were the best thing he'd had since he left Ohio.

She had loved him ever since.

She sat him at the table and put a grilled cheese in front of him that he hadn't asked for.

He said thank you to it.

"Where's your truck going to sleep?" she asked.

"Out front. I'll leave in a minute."

"You'll leave when you've eaten," Donna said. "That's not a request. That's a sandwich."

I stood at the counter with my arms crossed.

I watched him cut the crusts off his sandwich, which nobody had asked him to do.

"You can stop looking at me like that," he said.

"I'm not looking at you like anything."

"You're looking at me like I'm a crate."

"You are the one who showed up with a crate."

My mother covered her mouth with a napkin.

Abel set the knife down. His voice dropped, and he spoke to the table.

"Gil is clearing the vault on Friday. He told the staff this afternoon, and he told them to bring a dumpster."

I stopped smiling.

"What's in the vault that he wants in a dumpster?"

"Everything with your handwriting on it," Abel said. "Every reel. Every lyric sheet. Every scratch demo. He's calling it a records cleanup."

The kitchen was very quiet.

I put the butter knife in the sink.

"Then we're not letting him have it," I said.

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