A discordant jangle interrupted her reverie, and she looked over at the couch to see a frustrated expression on Johnny's face. "Here," she said, crossing the room and extending a hand. "I'll show you."

The guitar was in serious need of tuning, and she got out the tuning fork. It was a tedious process, but Johnny stuck with it. Afterward, she took him through the C and G chords, threw in a little practice on B7 just to keep things interesting. He liked the song "Scotch and Soda," and she located the Kingston Trio tape and played it for him so he'd know how it was supposed to sound. She tried him on "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," but although he liked the tune, he made a face at the lyrics. "Blowin' in the Wind" was okay, and so was "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," which he misplayed with gusto.

"Okay, enough," Kate said at nine o'clock. "You going to Ethan's or you bunking here?"

"Here," he replied, which meant she didn't have to roll out the Arctic Cat again to follow him home, and she was grateful. She made more mugs of cocoa with Nestle's, evaporated milk, and hot water from the kettle, but no marsh-mallows.

"My fingers hurt," he said.

She took his left hand and looked at the tips of his fingers. They were red and felt warm to the touch. "If you keep it up, they'll hurt worse. And then you'll work up calluses and they won't hurt anymore."

Unexpectedly, he took her left hand and looked at the tips of her fingers. "You don't have any."

"Not anymore."

"Because you quit playing."

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"I couldn't sing anymore, so there didn't seem to be much point."

His eyes went to her throat, to the scar that bisected it almost from ear to ear. "Because of that?"

"Yeah."

"How did you get it?"

"A guy had a knife. I took it away from him."

"But he cut you before you did."

"Yeah."

"When you were working for Dad."

"Yes."

"Does it still bother you?"

"The scar, or not being able to sing?"

"Both."

"Both," she replied, "although not as much as they used to." She put down the mug and picked up the guitar from where it was leaning against the coffee table. The weight of the body on her thigh felt familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, and the neck settled into her left palm with a tentative feeling. She gave the strings a few experimental strums, and without stopping to think about it, launched into "Molly Malone." Mutt, stretched out on the bearskin in front of the woodstove, raised her head, her ears going up, and fixed Kate with a steady gaze.

Kate's voice sounded husky to her hypercritical ears and she had to change octaves to hit the high notes. "Yesterday" was even harder to reach, but when she came to the end of the last verse, Johnny said, "That sounded fine. You can sing, Kate."