On the stage, the lights begin to flash, changing from red to green to blue, and Greta can feel the anticipation like it’s something buzzing and alive. When she walks out, the audience goes absolutely wild, with a cheer so loud it sends a shiver through her. But she doesn’t show it. She makes her way to the center of the stage, lifts a hand, and then stands there, square to the crowd, her shoulders straight and her chin high as the music begins behind her, the first notes of a song she’s never played in public before, a song nobody here has ever heard.
First there’s the keyboard, then the drums, the tempo building as a roar goes up all around them, the energy moving from the crowd to the stage and back again like a closed circuit, like they’re all out here inventing electricity, like the point is to light up this whole damn stage.
And even right then, even as she prepares to come in on the beat, even as her fingers hover over the strings—waiting, waiting—she’s scanning the crowd, searching for a familiar face, wondering if he might be there.
Just before she begins, she sees him.
He’s standing toward the front, a still point amid all the movement, the people hopping and dancing and swaying all around him.
And he’s holding a sign.
It says GRETA’S DAD.
Behind her, the rhythm shifts, her cue to begin. But she doesn’t. Instead, she lifts a hand, and the others stop playing. She can feel the collective intake of breath from the crowd as they wonder if history is about to repeat itself. But she doesn’t pay any attention to that. She’s too busy mouthing something to her band.
A moment later, the music swells again, slower now, more haunting, and the place erupts with wild cheers at the opening notes of “Astronomy,” which had once been a song about hope, and then later sorrow, but underneath it all was always—always—about love.
This time, Greta doesn’t hesitate. Not even for a second.
She just smiles and starts to play the fucking guitar.
Chapter Thirty-Four
She reads the book one more time before she mails it back. It doesn’t seem fair to keep something so personal, something dog-eared and marked up and well loved. Still, it’s not easy to part with it. Dropping it into a mailing envelope, addressing it to Ben at Columbia, walking it over to the post office: all of it feels like saying goodbye.
She keeps his sweatshirt. That, she decides, he can live without.
Besides, she’s taken to sleeping in it as the weather has started to turn cool again.
For the last few months, Greta has mostly been on the road, and it feels good to be back to normal: a blur of airports and hotels and venues, but also the clear reminder each night—as she stands before a crowd, guitar in hand—how rare and wonderful it is to get to do something you love.
She didn’t read any of the reviews when the new album came out, but her dad continues to summarize them during their Sunday evening phone calls, a habit they’ve fallen into ever since he came to her show.
“You got a rave in the Times,” he’ll say. “They called it inventive and complicated and they especially loved—”
“Dad.”
“Okay, okay. Well, it’s in the scrapbook now if you ever change your mind.”
The idea of him keeping up her mom’s collection of articles and reviews would’ve been unfathomable only a few months ago. But now Asher tells her that he insists on showing it to anyone who comes over for dinner.
Conrad asks her only once if she ever hears from Ben, and she tells him the truth: it wasn’t meant to last.
“Maybe the point isn’t always to make things last,” he says. “Maybe it’s just to make them count.”
The way she sees it, they did.
Then one day, she finds a package in the stack of mail left outside her apartment door. In the corner is a Columbia University address. She rips it open and finds a small blue clothbound book, with little huskies and snow-covered trees etched into its cover. Tucked inside, there’s a note written on a piece of university stationery. Thanks for sending mine back. Did you read it?
Greta puzzles over that question mark for a while. It’s open-ended; an invitation. She leaves the note on her desk, pausing to read it every so often when she walks by, though she’s memorized each word. It isn’t until a couple weeks later, when she stops by Powell’s Books the morning before a gig in Portland and sees a different edition—this one snowy and simple, a blank landscape with only the shadow of a dog in the corner—that she realizes she’s going to respond.