Page 22 of Call Off the Dark

“It’s British punk,” he explained.

“Oh, cool!” Helen tried to appear intrigued.

Tyler saw her expression and started laughing.

“I’m a bad liar!” She ducked her head and covered her face. “Sorry, but I find punk a little jarring.”

“Agreed.” Tyler raised his pint glass to toast, and she clinked hers into his.

“Then why do you like it?”

“I like the energy of it. Especially standing right at the stage.”

Maybe it made perfect sense that Tyler would like music that was so rousing and fast. He seemed so calm, so perhaps the aggressive sounds didn’t irritate him, as they did her, but rather fueled him. She wanted to see it: this man with his patient and grounded confidence, standing at the stage.

“I like most kinds of music though, not just punk,” he said. “I listen to film scores when I’m programming on my computer.”

“Okay, wow. That’s the other end of the spectrum,” she said. “Like instrumentals?”

“Right. Orchestral scores especially.”

“That’s interesting,” Helen said, picturing him in front of a computer, a symphony around him. She wanted to see all of these different shades of him. “I’ll go to the punk concert with you.”

“Yeah?” Tyler straightened up a little.

“Yeah. But only if we stand at the stage.”

He grinned. “Deal.”

Helen and Tyler stayed at the bar that night talking about everything and nothing until two o’clock in the morning, when the bartender tossed a damp rag on the counter and said, “Sorry, we’re closing.” Neither of them had noticed the entire place had cleared out while the ice in their tumblers melted.

That weekend, they went to the punk concert and crowded by the stage. Helen confirmed that she didn’t like punk music, but she learned that she loved watching Tyler sing along with it, his hands in the air. She raised hers next to his, every single song.

Chapter Ten

Present day

Boiling is a brisk and violent process. Helen only needed to simmer the stew, but she got distracted by the sound of the record player weeping, preoccupied with the violin strings talking to her in B minor.

Helen rarely listened to her record player, because it consumed precious electricity. Living remotely like this required her to make choices: Did she want to use a lantern in the kitchen while she cooked in the evenings, or did she want to use the overhead lighting? Her choice was always overhead lighting, which meant she rarely had the luxury of music. But Wade was in town tonight, and she was alone in the farmhouse, so she was using the overhead lighting and playing a record.

Not just any record. One of Tyler’s records.

Her long hair was coming loose from its bun, feet bare, hands clutched in front of her, eyes closed as she remembered slow dancing with him. This song had been his favorite instrumental. They had only ever bought a couple of dozen albums to play on the vintage Zenith record player she’d found in a thrift store. The moment she’d seen it, she’d fallen in love with the way it had looked inside its little beige portable suitcase and had to have it for their living room. The record player was one of the only material things she’d brought from her old life into this one. She’d left behind the punk and rock and pop records in her parents’ garage and brought only their four instrumental albums. That kind of music seemed fitting with this kind of life. At the time, she’d told herself it was a logical choice: If she wanted occasional music, a record player made sense, and instrumental music was timeless. But whenever she played it, she couldn’t escape the fact that she’d brought it out here the same way a child clings to teddy bears and blankets. She’d needed something that was hers and Tyler’s, something that Wade wouldn’t suspect was sentimental.

The instrumental song lodged the sorrow deeper inside her as she repeated his name in her head: Tyler, Tyler, Tyler, then eventually please, please, please, begging to no one for a reprieve.

The sudden knock on the door surprised her. She hadn’t wanted Wade to come home while she was playing this record, but he was earlier than expected.

Over the music, she heard a muffled “Helen?” Later, she would wonder if what she’d heard was Hello, not Helen.

“Hold on, Wade!” she called out.

She hurried across the kitchen to the door and undid the deadbolt, then hurried back to the wood stove and moved the boiling cast-iron pot from the burner. She stirred the stew with a large spoon, trying to loosen the bits that had burned to the bottom of the pot.

Footsteps entered.

“It’s almost ready. You get what you needed?” she asked.