Driving will fix things. Changing direction. Gaining distance, getting to the kind of numb where miles fill in for feelings. I like the way the road sounds. I like the rhythms that come from the tires and the windshield wipers, rain and the rush of wind, and how the sounds change when I raise or lower the window. My dad used to say that good folk music is etched with the rhythm of the road. I always listen for it in songs and I find it in the best ones. So when I’m driving, I pay attention to all the noise; I take in the smells and everything I see and everything I am and I start my song. It begins like a story in my head and then somewhere in the middle it isn’t about me anymore—my love songs aren’t about Adam or Robert, that song about leaving home isn’t about Ithaca or Little River, Missing You is about a made-up girl missing a made-up friend. It’s not about Carly.

I can make a better song when it’s less about the truth of what happened and more about making everything fit together in the most perfect way. Then when I sing my songs in front of an audience, it’s safer. I’m not giving everything I have, laid out for them like a flawless map of my insides. I’m singing songs about a parallel me, in some other voice, in code they don’t even know. And when I’m driving and the words are all coming together, I feel the most like myself and like someone else entirely at the very same time.

I drive to Ithaca. It’s my magnet. Every time I’m near, it pulls. It’s the place I’d stay if I could ever stay someplace. It’s the place I wish I’d never left. I’m tired of fighting it. I just need to go.

Carly is gone, I’m sure. Rosemary probably is too. So I walk through The Commons. It’s one of those weird days when it’s way warmer than it should be. It’s even sunny. Like the weather is trying to fool us into thinking it isn’t November and winter won’t be long and cold and cloudy.

I walk past Decadence. It’s called Juna’s now. It’s still a coffee place, but it’s not dark and moody and perfect anymore. It’s all yellow tile and big windows.

I get a cup of tea from the bakery across the way, from the little lady with the long white braids. She doesn’t recognize me. She sees kids come and go over and over. I’m just another face.