Chapter 7: Seven Years of Songs

I sat down on the floor in the middle of the room.

Emmylou was already pulling on her boots.

"I'm going over there," she said. "I'm going to kick his door in and take it back."

"You'll get arrested."

"I'll get arrested holding a notebook. Worth it."

"Em. Sit down."

She sat down, still in one boot, and held my hand.

Three years of songs had been in that book.

My grandmother's porch.

Every song I'd written since I was nineteen, in pencil.

The coffee ring on the cover was from the first night Breckin told me I was talented.

I closed my eyes.

And I heard "Rented Tux."

Not the page.

The song.

The first chord, and the way the second verse turned on the word "borrowed."

The high harmony I'd sung on Breckin's third album while he got the credit.

I heard "Cumberland in the Rain."

I heard "Porch Light," and eight more after it, whole, with the breath marks.

"Kenz?" Emmylou said. "You're smiling. That's scary."

"He took the book," I said.

"Yeah, I know, I was there."

"He took the songs I've already written."

"Okay?"

"He can't take the ones I haven't."

She looked at me.

I got up and called Hudson.

He answered on the first ring, at one forty in the morning.

"Studio B," I said. "Can you open it?"

"I came back around the block when I saw the lanterns," he said. "I'm parked across the street, deciding whether it's my business."

"It's your business," I said. "Come up and get me."

By two, I was standing in the vocal booth with headphones on, and Hudson was behind the glass at the console.

Emmylou had gone home to guard the apartment with a chair under the doorknob and a drumstick in each hand.

"What are we cutting?" Hudson asked through the talkback.

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