Dead Man's Playlist: Chapter 6

The next morning was thick with fog.

Junie stood on the porch, blanket over her shoulders, coffee in hand, and watched the trees disappear into soft gray nothing. The lake was a pale blur. The birds were quiet, and even the wind seemed cautious. She hadn't played a record yet. She hadn't written in her journal either.

Some days started not with motion but with stillness, like her grief needed to catch its breath. She thought about Mira's voice from the night before. How grounding it had felt to hear someone who knew her now, not just the version of her described in vinyl and fading photographs. Someone who hadn't disappeared, who had been present for so much.

The kettle inside began to whistle. She turned, stepping into the cabin, and noticed something odd in the morning silence. The blackbird was gone. The familiar call gone and what was left behind seemed empty.

-

She pulled out the leather notebook after lunch, flipping past the entries she'd already marked. The next one was simple.

TRACK 8 - Radiohead, 'No Surprises,' - Play when you're tired of pretending.

Her hands hesitated. She remembered the note she'd seen beneath the title, back when she first looked ahead. I wrote you a letter I never sent. It's in the matchbook drawer. The damn drawer again. She crossed the room to open it. The same clutter of matchbooks, some cracked, others curling from moisture or time. She sifted carefully until she spotted it. There it was, plain white, unmarked, a thick envelope. Inside, a series of napkins, neatly folded, the faded handwriting just barely visible, faded with time. The edges stained as if from hours of writing on a diner table.

She unfolded it and read,

"Junie,

I want to say I'm sorry, but that word is too small. I left you with questions, and I don't deserve your forgiveness. But I never stopped wanting to know you. Never stopped imagining who you were becoming. I used to wonder if your voice stayed soft or turned sharp. I wondered what books you loved, who broke your heart first, what you named your first cat. If I could trade the last ten years for one afternoon of hearing you talk about the song stuck in your head I would.

I didn't know how to be in your life without damaging it. But not being there didn't fix it either.

Junie folded the first napkin, carefully, like it might dissolve under pressure. Then she placed the next record on the player. 'No Surprises,' she thought ruefully. Right. A lullaby for burnout. For people pretending they're okay until they forget they're pretending. Was she pretending? Was she okay? The song played like it had been waiting for her, it opened up for her. Her father's voice entered halfway through, quiet, almost afraid to interrupt it.

"I didn't know how to be the kind of man you could count on. I wanted to be. I swear I did. But I'd already spent so long being the man who vanished. I told myself it was better if I disappeared. Cleaner. Simpler. I said I was doing it for you. That lie got me through a lot of days. But you always deserved better than silence. You deserved presence. Imperfect, fumbling presence.

I'm so sorry I never knocked on your door again. I'm sorry the letter sat in this drawer instead of in your hand. I'm sorry it took death to get me to be brave. I'm sorry that the only action I ever took was inaction. Only my last actions will matter, and I want to make sure they are the right ones."

She didn't cry right away. She just sat, absorbing it, like a field taking rain. The words sank slowly, into places she hadn't realized were dry. Places that yearned. When she finally stood, she felt smaller. The weight was back, she carried it differently now. What was the point of all this? She folded the napkin again and again and again, scrunching it small in her balled fist. She held it for a long time, shaking, but feeling nothing but a void inside. A stillness, emptiness, a rage with no heat.

She swiped a matchbook and stormed outside. The fog was lifting by afternoon, burned off by sun. The lake sparkled again, its joy a taunt as the storm clouds gathered around her, rumbling. A ripple moved across the lake, caused by something unseen, as if a manifestation of her fury. Junie imagined her father's reflection there, blurry and indistinct, but watching. She seethed at it. She didn't speak, but her body screamed, goosebumps across her flesh.

Holding the napkin with one hand she lit a match, holding it underneath the edges, and watched as the bright red flames licked up the dry white cloth, peeling back into black. She hurled it down into the firepit, watching the letters curl away to ash. Why? Why did he feel the need to burden her now? Did he think this would absolve him somehow. Absolve him of a lifetime of nothing?

-

That night, she made soup from the last of the dried lentils in the panty. She played no music, just listening to the crackling fire and the faint sound of distant loons. The cabin felt haunted now, and she wasn't sure if the presence she felt was her own anger or that of her father's, bearing down on her.

She sat at the kitchen table, looking at the notebook again. She traced her finger down the volume's entry, flipping back across the pages she'd already read. All those songs. All those confessions. But this one, 'No Surprises', felt different. It didn't feel like it was about her father's guilt. It felt like his absolution, pretending life could be quieter when the noise is your own pretending. She curled up beneath her quilt, and stared for a long time.

The room was heavy now, the silence pressing on her. And just as her eyes were starting to drift shut, her phone buzzed softly on the side table nearest her.

Mira. She answered.

"Hey," she said, voice rasping with fatigue.

"Hey," Mira said. "I didn't wake you, did I?"

"Almost, but it's okay."

"I just, I don't know. I had a weird dream. And then I thought about you, and it felt like maybe you needed to hear a voice."

Junie blinked hard. "I kind of did."

"How you holding up?" Junie thought about lying. About saying something light. But instead she breathed into the dark and said,

"I don't know who I'm supposed to be when I come home."

"You're just Junie," Mira said, like it was the easiest answer in the world. "That's all you have to be. That's all you ever need to be." Junie's throat tightened. Mira continued, "What he did, that doesn't define you. He wasn't even in your life. But his action, he put that on you, that's not what a father does. It's not what a dad does, okay?"

"I think I need to come back soon." She could hear the sound of Mira's approval through the phone.

"Okay, come back when you're ready. I'm right here."

"I'm scared that when I come back, I'll forget everything I felt out here."

"Then I'll help you remember," Mira said. "You don't have to carry it alone." Junie closed her eyes.

"Thanks," she whispered. They didn't say goodbye. They just listened to each other breathe until the line went still. And then, finally, Junie slept.

Want to Read More?

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10