PROLOGUE
* Kate *
*** Two and a Half Weeks Ago ***
As I waved to Becca through the streetcar window, I was struck by a touch of melancholy. Perhaps it was weird that I’d come to rely on my friends so much, but in a way, they were my family.
Going without our weekly talks for a while was going to be strange. Joanna would be coming back just before I was leaving, and we’d be scattered for about a month. Turning the corner, I walked down the street to my basement apartment.
I wasn’t too worried – we sometimes went a few weeks without the five of us having any deep conversations. But with our mission to start looking for relationships a bit more seriously, I couldn’t help wondering if we would all be extremely busy this fall.
It was a lot to hope for that we would each find a wonderful partner. It was outrageous to hope that we would each find a wonderful partner who understood that their new girlfriend already had every Thursday night booked for the foreseeable future.
That was one thing that worried me in my abstract, dreamlike quest to find a boyfriend. I couldn’t handle anyone clingy. I was incredibly independent and didn’t want anyone to mess with my schedule, or my workflow – especially when I was songwriting.
Walking up the driveway and into the side door of the small brick house, I went downstairs to my amazing basement apartment. Other than the minuscule bathroom, it was one large room. The kitchen and my bed were at one end, and my music and recording setup were at the other.
There weren’t many apartments around where you could record music right in your own home without people complaining about the noise. But Mrs. Hiebert, the widow who owned the house and lived upstairs, was a bit hard of hearing, and her bedroom was on the second storey.
I used headphones if it was extremely late at night, but during the day she didn’t care at all if I played guitar and sang, or even worked on drum beats.
She didn’t even complain when the five of us girls would occasionally blast music on a Saturday night and drink a bit too much wine. I took the garbage out for her, shoveled the snow in winter, and helped her with a heavy grocery run once a month. It was a sweet deal, and the rent was more than fair. I’d even arranged to have my brother Kevin check on her a couple of times when I was away on vacation in a cabin in the forest.
I was a bit too wired to sleep yet, so I started pulling out some of my notebooks, flipping through the fragments of ideas for song lyrics I had collected over the past year.
I couldn’t wait to have some songwriting time in a cabin by myself. My job was so busy and frantic some days that I just didn’t have a lot of songwriting energy left by the time I got home.
Managing a huge rehearsal space was sort of like playing a board game where the pieces kept moving of their own accord, and half of the players thought they could change the rules any time they wanted.
Sometimes bands tried to beg for free time, or overstayed their scheduled slot and didn’t think there would be consequences. If they thought our rehearsal space was strict, wait until they actually started booking gigs. Let’s see what the promoter said when they didn’t hit the stage when they were told to, and didn’t stick to their set time! Ugh.
Many of the bands that came through were amazing, though. They would pay for three months in advance to secure their space, they were clean and polite, and even helped other bands if anyone was carrying heavy gear. It was also nice when they brought me a coffee and didn’t hit on me.
At least, I don’t think any of them ever hit on me. It was sort of hard to tell. Some guys were so flirty that it was like breathing to them. It didn’t mean anything. So I just assumed that they were trying to be funny or cute, or impress their friends.
Finding a half-page in my notebook that simply read, “Write a song about men and women not quite knowing how to flirt with each other properly,” I added that to the pile to take to the cabin.
Although I was tempted to bring some recording gear, I didn’t know whether the power would be stable, and wasn’t quite sure how weatherproof the cabins were. If it was damp or dirty, I couldn’t risk my electronics. My trusty old acoustic guitar would have to do the job. I would just record things on my phone so that I had a note of the finished products.
I was so excited to finally get a real collection of songs together that I wished I could have snapped my fingers and been in the forest right now.
CHAPTER ONE
* Kate *
Surrounded by trees, giant rocks, and acres of greenery, everything was so peaceful. The snow capped mountains just over the trees made me feel like I was in a postcard. Even though this hike was a bit harder than I had expected, I felt like my mind was being swept clean.
The damp air filtered the shades of green, making them seem even deeper. It had rained early this morning, and the roads and trails were a bit slippery. The feeling of the forest washed over me in a refreshing wave from the first cool, deep breath surrounded by leaves.
The second I had my luggage and guitar stored in the quaint, rustic cabin, I went for a walk. If I had any song ideas, I could dictate them into my phone. But first I wanted to absorb the quiet of the forest and be one with the greenery.
This trail had been labeled an easy hike, but I guess that the mapmaker had never been here when it was muddy. Slowly making my way up the slight hill, I slipped a few times but finally reached the top.
There was a clearing and I could look back across a field of wildflowers to the twelve cabins spaced far apart along a few miles of trail. Some were almost hidden in the thick woods.
When I was first searching for woodland cabins that I could afford, many of them were a group situation, where I’d be staying with several people in a sort of bunkhouse. That absolutely would not work for me. I was fiercely independent, and needed my space. There was no way I could work with someone breathing down my neck, which is what it would feel like if a stranger was within twenty feet of me. Songwriting was personal, and amplified
my need to be alone.
My small cabin here was perfect, and there was a fair amount of space between every building. I’m sure I’d run into others, but I could still have plenty of solitary time.
The first cabin was much bigger than the rest. Ray and Dan, the caretakers of these cabins, lived there, but they weren’t home when I arrived. There was a note on the door to look in the mailbox, where the key for cabin number eleven was clearly marked.
Damn, I was certainly not in the city anymore.