It doesn’t feel so lonely out here, now. It was solitude at first, and I’m not really even sure when it became loneliness. When he came out, maybe. But now that he’s over there, and I can hear his voice and his guitar, I’m not as lonely.

He moves without pause into “The Boxer” and I hum along under my breath.

Dad used to love this song. He’d sit on the screened-in back porch on summer evenings, with the cicadas singing and the heat oppressive and he’d be shirtless, hairy and a little overweight, and he’d have his old Yamaha on his belly and his feet would be propped up on a battered blue milk crate, and he’d play every song he knew, with a beer sweating on the floor beside him.

God, why is everything reminding me of my father, all of a sudden?

I swear to God, if Nathan plays—

Yeah, there it is. “Cat’s in the Cradle” by Harry Chapin.

It’s like they have the same damn playlist, him and Dad.

Then, Nathan surprises me even more. Freestyle. He just strums, picks, and hums, nothing I recognize. It’s a slow, sad melody, and it seems half remembered and half improvised.

There’s a long silence, then, the last notes quavering across the lake.

“What was that last one you played?” I ask, just loud enough to be sure he hears me.

“Didn’t know you were there,” he says.

“Just stargazing. And eating chocolate.”

“It’s, uh…a little thing I used to play. For…well, uh. For someone who’s now gone.”

I recognize that hesitation. Where you don’t want to even mention it, because it brings on the “I’m sorry for your loss” and the pitying eyes and the questions they don’t know how to ask.

“It’s a beautiful piece of music,” I say. A pause. “I wasn’t intending to eavesdrop, Nathan.”

“I know. I just haven’t played in, oh god, years. Lost the habit. Life gets busy, and somehow it’s the things you really love doing that get left on the wayside, you know?”

“Like me and watercolors.”

“That’s right—you said you painted.”

“I mean, sort of. It was just for me. I started doing it in high school as a way to cope with…loss, and stress, and things like that. Then, like you said, life happened.” I sigh, something not quite a laugh. “I wasn’t very good.”

“Neither am I. I started playing for similar reasons. My dad…those were all his favorite songs. I learned them as a way to…connect with him, I guess.”

“You are good, though.”

“I was once told I sound like a chainsaw at the bottom of a well when I sing.”

I snicker at that. “That’s not nice. And untrue.”