Dead Man's Playlist: Chapter 4

The cabin didn't have Wi-Fi.

No cell signal either. Just trees and wind and a lake that glimmered like spilled mercury when the sun hit it right. Junie hadn't seen a car in hours. No voices, no planes overhead, just the sigh of the pines and the hush of water lapping the dock.

It was quiet in a way cities never were. Not empty, just patient. The black envelope sat on a record player like it had been waiting. She peeled it open carefully. Inside was Volume V. No label on the sleeve, but the center of the the vinyl was stamped in faint gold.

TRACK 5 - The Band, 'I Shall be Released', - Play alone. Let the air settle. There was a note tucked in beside it. "This one isn't a memory. It's a prayer." Junie took a deep breath. She placed the record on the turntable, dropped the needle, and sat cross-legged on the worn rug in the middle of the cabin's creaking floor.

Music filled the space like a rising mist, slow, aching, too human to be just sound. then her father's voice joined it.

"I bought this place with a tax refund and a bottle of hope." She closed her eyes. "You were three. Your mom and I were pretending we weren't pretending. I told her I'd buy a cabin, use it to write a novel. She laughed. Said I couldn't even write a grocery list." He laughed, a dry, real sound. The first laugh she'd heard from him on any of the records.

"She wasn't wrong. I never wrote a novel. And I never told her I went through with it. That the cabin ever existed at all. But I came here. When I needed to breathe. When I needed to remember what it was like to be a person instead of a disappointment. I brought books and whiskey and sometimes your drawings from school as you grew older. I pinned them to the walls. Made the place feel like it had ghosts I actually liked."

Junie opened her eyes and looked at the empty walls. She could see them now, crayon masterpieces, smiling suns and horses. Pieces of herself he had kept, even when he couldn't keep her.

"I always meant to bring you here. To have our own special place. But there was never a good time. And then time ran out. I'm not proud of everything I did. But hell if I'm not proud of this place. And I'm proud of you."

The song ended. The silence that followed wasn't heavy. It felt sacred. Junie stood and walked to the wall by the stoev. Her fingers found the pinholes in the wood paneling, one after another. A constellation of what-could-have-beens. She whispered,

"I'm here."

-

That afternoon, she stepped out into the light.

The air smelled like sap and sun-warmed cedar. She wandered down the path behind the cabin, following the curve of the hill. The lake sparkled through the trees.

Halfway to the dock, she heard something. A low cough. Then the soft crunch of gravel. She froze. A figure emerged from a path to the left, an older woman in a flannel jacket, her gray hair tied back in a thick braid. She carried a canvas tote and what looked like a walking stick whittled down from driftwood.

The woman stopped, surprised. "Well, I'll be damned."

Junie blinked. "Hi?"

"You're Curtis's girl, aren't you?" Junie's mouth opened before she realized she was nodding.

"Yeah. Junie." The woman smiled, a little sadly.

"Irene Mallory. I've got the cabin two lots down the ridge that way. Used to trade books and eggs with your dad back when he'd come up regular."

"Oh," Junie said. "I didn't think anyone else lived nearby."

"only in the warmer months. This place turns to frostbite come November. I was just coming by to see if the raccoons got back in the compost shed again." She tilted her head. "Guess fate had other plans for me, didn't she?" Junie offered a weak smile. Irene studied her for a long moment, then gestured with her chin.

"I made coffee. You hungry?" Junie's stomach grumbled at the mere thought of a proper meal.

"Yeah, I could eat. Thanks."

"Come along then," and Irene turned on her her booted heel, motioning with the stick for Junie to follow. Junie fell in on the path behind her. The walk wasn't long, winding beside the lake to a similar cabin to the one her father had left behind. Though this one was warmer, more cared for, lived in. The inside of Irene's cabin was homey, with mismatched curtains and the smell of cinnamon. They sat on the porch, mugs steaming in their hands.

"I always liked your dad," Irene said. "Sad man, but kind. He'd bring me cassette mixtapes sometimes. We both liked the old stuff - Mitchell, Cohen, Staples. Even got him into Gillian Welch."

Junie sipped carefully. "He left me...a collection. Records. Each one's got a message." Irene raised her eyebrows, but didn't seem surprised.

"Curtis never did anything halfway." There was a beat of silence. Junie looked out over the trees, watching the sun slip behind the pine needles on the far side of the lake, setting the branches ablaze in a golden glow.

"Did he ever talk about me?" Irene nodded slowly.

"he talked about you a lot more than he thought he did. Always said your name like it was something he'd been afraid to lose." Junie swallowed hard. "He never stopped loving you, Junie. Not that it's my business, but I know a thing or two about strained family relations." She sighed. "He just didn't know how to show it without dropping it all over the floor."

Junie smiled at the phrasing. "that sounds like him." They sat a while longer, listening to birdsong and the lake breeze. Watching the last rays fall. Before she left, Irene pressed a small envelope into her hand.

"Found this in my attic last year. One of the tapes he made me. It's got your name scribbled on the case. Figured he meant to give it to you one day."

Junie clutched it like a secret.

-

Back at her cabin, she opened the envelope. Inside, a cassette labeled in her father's handwriting. 'Junie's Tape - For When You're Older.' She didn't have a tape player. Yet. For now she tucked it into her bag and returned to the record player. There were still more volumes.

TRACK 6 - Leonard Cohen, 'Suzanne' - Play near water. Let it echo.

Junie smiled faintly. "Good timing, Dad." She set the record spinning and cracked the window, feeling the cool breeze dance across her skin.

"I met Suzanne before I met your mom" Junie blinked. "She wasn't my lover. Just someone who cracked the window open when everything felt stuck. She ran a bookstore downtown. I walked in looking for maps. Walked out with a paperback of Neruda and a chipped coffee mug with a peace sign on it. She told me once that people aren't places you arrive at. They're rivers you drift with. Your mom never liked her. Thought I carried too much of Suzanne's ghost with me. Maybe she was right."

The music swelled. Melancholy wrapped in poetry.

"But Suzanne reminded me to listen. To women. To music. To you." Junie sat with that for a long time as Dusk crept in, shadows softening the corners of the cabin. When it was time, she did the only thing that made sense.

She found the next record.

TRACK 7 - Simon & Garfunkel, 'The Sound of Silence' - For What We Didn't Say

"I never told you about the day I left." Junie stiffened. "You were nine. You asked me to stay. You were standing in the hallway in those pajamas with the little suns on them. Holding that stuffed bear with one arm and a juice box in the other. You looked so small. So damn certain."

"And I told you I couldn't. But the truth is...I could have." Junie's breath caught in her throat. The guitar humming behind his voice like it was holding space for him to finish.

"Your mother and I had already unpacked the damage. We just hadn't put it in boxes yet. We kept walking around it, pretending it was furniture. Something we could live with. I told myself it would be cleaner this way. that if I left fast and stayed gone, it would heal faster. Like pulling a splinter before it festers. I told myself I'd write. Call. Show up when the dust settled. But time makes liars of all of us.

The record crackled gently. Somewhere in the background, she thought she heard the faint, rhythmic sound of a clock ticking.

"I watched birthdays pass from a distance. I memorized your school photos from your mother's Facebook page before she blocked me. I kept a voicemail you left by mistake when you were twelve. You were trying to call your friend Jess, I think. You just laughed and said, 'Ugh, wrong number.' It was six seconds. I must have listened to those six seconds for hours." Junie's hand was over her mouth now, muffling sobs.

"You didn't forget me, but you did learn how to live without me. And I let you. Because I didn't believe I could make anything better by being near." A long pause. He breathed in, shaky. "But I didn't forget you, Junie. Not for a day. Not one." The strumming guitar curled into a final exhale, as if it, too, had nothing left to say.

The record ended. Junie didn't move. She didn't wipe her face. The tears didn't fall like rain. They rose like steam, quiet, invisible at first, until they were everywhere. Until they filled the room. Until she couldn't pretend she wasn't breathing them in. Choking on them. She stayed that way until she fell asleep.

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Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10