When I Stole My Ex's Grammy--And Build My Own Throne

Twilight in Billings, Montana, always carried a kind of raw, gravel-edged tenderness. The May wind swept down from the Rockies, bearing the lingering breath of melting snow, skimming over the slate-gray roofs of the workers’ quarter on the town’s eastern edge before curling past the attic window of a faded green Victorian house on Seventh Street. In that attic sat seventeen-year-old Lyra Mason, cross-legged on a threadbare Oriental rug. Her freckles glowed in the slanting sunset like a dusting of cinnamon on warm milk. Resting across her knees was the only decent thing her father had left behind—a secondhand 1972 Martin D-28, its neck polished to an amber sheen by years of use. Her fingers wandered lightly across the strings, nails clipped short, calluses thin but unmistakable on her fingertips. “On the seventh spring in a nameless town, I counted four hundred and twenty-three trains crossing the plain— none of them ever stopped, just like my name, never remembered by anyone…” Her voice was barely more than a whisper, as if she were singing to herself. Outside, the clouds had turned salmon pink and lavender violet, while the distant Union Pacific tracks caught the last glimmer of gold. A notebook lay open beside her knee; its neat, careful script looked nothing like a teenager’s scrawl—Mrs. Emma, her music teacher, had insisted on that. If your handwriting is as messy as your life, no one will take your songs seriously. Downstairs came the clang of a cast-iron skillet, followed by her siblings’ clamoring voices. “Michael! Turn that TV down!” her mother Jade called through the floorboards. “Caitlin, wash your brother’s hands—dinner in five minutes!” Lyra did not move. She was stuck on the melody of the second chorus, brows knit, golden hair loosely tied back in a ponytail, stray strands clinging to the sweat at her nape. She shifted the chords from G to Em, sliding in a half-step glissando—there it was, that bittersweet edge she had been chasing. The attic was her kingdom. Posters crowded the slanted ceiling: Nirvana’s 1991 Nevermind tour, Tori Amos’s Little Earthquakes, a black-and-white photograph of Joni Mitchell at Newport. In one corner lay a pile of cassette tapes—mostly blanks, along with copies she had dubbed at the public library: Carole King’s Tapestry, Fiona Apple’s Tidal. Lyra had clipped a recent Rolling Stone article about Apple—a seventeen-year-old like her, already with a debut album—and pasted it into her diary with a furious red-ink question beside it: Why not me? Heavy footsteps creaked up the stairs. Lyra snapped her notebook shut and slipped it into her guitar case. By the time the door opened, she was pretending to practice scales. Jade Mason stood in the doorway holding two mugs. At forty-three, softly rounded and wrapped in a faded apron, her brown hair was pinned into a loose bun streaked with silver. Yet her eyes—cornflower blue like Lyra’s—still shone brightly. “Still writing those sad songs?” Jade asked, handing over a mug of hot cocoa. Her own held black coffee. “Just practicing.” Lyra accepted it; the steam fogged her thick plastic glasses. She pulled them off—she hated contact lenses—and wiped them on the hem of her T-shirt. Jade settled into an old armchair that groaned beneath her. She surveyed the attic: the Yamaha upright piano they were still paying off in installments; pinned sheet music trembling in the draft; a dying pot of lavender on the windowsill that Lyra had planted in a leftover school lab container. “Mrs. Emma called today,” Jade said after a sip of coffee. “She thinks you should apply to Berklee.” Lyra’s fingers froze on the strings. “We can’t afford that.” “Scholarships? She says you have real talent—” “Some freckled freak from Billings applying to Berklee?” Lyra’s voice sharpened. “Mom, be realistic. Last week in career counseling Mr. Rogers said girls who ‘play music’ end up as music teachers—if they’re lucky.” A crash rang from downstairs, followed by her little brother’s wail. Jade sighed, her shoulders sagging. “Come eat. There’s meatloaf tonight.” “I’m not hungry.” “Lyra.” “I said I’m not hungry!” The words spilled out before she could stop them. Something flickered across Jade’s face—not anger, but a deeper, older weariness. She simply nodded and rose slowly, steadying her lower back. Lyra noticed and felt a pang of dread. “Mom—your back—” “Same old trouble.” Jade waved it off, then paused at the door. “Your father sent a check. Not much, but enough for next month’s utilities.” The door closed quietly behind her. Lyra buried her face in her hands. Father. The word felt like shattered glass on her tongue. Five years earlier, Thomas Mason had said he was going to Seattle to “find better opportunities,” and then vanished without a trace. Only last year had the occasional checks begun to arrive—no notes, no return address. Jed never spoke ill of him; she simply deposited the money, her gaze vacant. Lyra lifted her guitar again, fingers seeking the melody she had just found. This time she sang aloud, her voice reverberating through the narrow attic: > “The day the train carried my father away, > Mother buried her sobs in kneading dough. > She said, Lyra, you must remember— > some hearts are too small > to hold another person’s dreams…” Downstairs, the dinner-table air was thick, like congealed gravy. On the long table sat simple fare: mashed potatoes, canned green beans, and meatloaf made from discounted ground beef. Eight-year-old twins Michael and Kaitlyn fought over the last piece of bread, while twelve-year-old Margaret buried herself in The Catcher in the Rye, its pages dog-eared. Five-year-old Sam arranged green beans into the shape of a train. Jed sat at the head of the table, mechanically cutting her meatloaf. Her wedding ring was gone—Lyra had noticed weeks ago. That thin gold band, bought while her father worked at a gas station, had been cheap. She had asked nothing. Some answers hurt too much to seek. “Lyra,” Margaret looked up from behind her book, “Susie says you wrote a swear word on the gym locker. Is that true?” Lyra’s fork froze. “What?” “Susie Miller. She says you’re a freak who clings to your guitar and has no friends. So you wrote b***h on her locker.” “I didn’t.” “Then why did Mrs. Baker call you to the office?” “Because someone saw something,” Lyra said tightly. “They saw Susie and her friends pouring ketchup into my music locker. All my sheet music was ruined.” Silence fell over the table. Even the twins stopped squabbling. Jed set down her knife and fork. “When did this happen?” “Last week.” Lyra stared at her plate. “It doesn’t matter.” “Of course it matters!” Jed’s voice rose, then dropped again. “They can’t treat you like that—” “They can,” Lyra met her mother’s eyes. “Because I’m a freckled freak in glasses who writes songs in the library at lunch. That’s the rule, Mom. Either you fit in, or you get crushed.” Sam whispered, “I like Lyra’s freckles. They look like little stars.” Lyra’s heart tightened. Jed inhaled deeply and surveyed her life in a single sweep—five children, an absent husband, $312 in the bank, and a sink piled high with dirty dishes. Her gaze finally settled on Lyra, and in those blue eyes—so like her own—she saw something hard and unyielding. “After dinner,” Jed said, “I need to talk to Lyra. Kids, help with the dishes.” The kitchen smelled of cheap detergent and leftovers. Jed turned off the tap, dried her hands on her apron, and pulled an envelope from her pocket. “What is this?” “Open it.” Lyra slid out the paper: a real-estate letterhead stamped Confirmation of Sale. The address was their house. “You sold our home?” Lyra’s voice trembled. “Yes.” Jed’s tone was eerily calm. “Your grandmother’s house. A developer bought it. They’ll tear it down for apartments. We have to be out by the end of June.” “Where will we go? We don’t have—” “Nashville.” The word hung in the air like an incantation. Lyra could barely breathe. Nashville—the city of music, record labels, studios, and the Country Music Hall of Fame she had only seen in Billboard magazine. “Mrs. Emma contacted an old classmate,” Jed continued, speaking quickly as if reciting something rehearsed. “There’s a summer program in Nashville for gifted young musicians—housing and courses included. She says you qualify. The house money… will cover a small apartment there for a year.” “And the others? School? Everything?” “I’ll manage.” Jed’s voice carried a steel Lyra had never heard before. “Margaret can help with the little ones. I’ll take a night job. But Lyra—this is your chance. Your only chance.” Lyra leaned against the refrigerator, its chill seeping through her T-shirt. She looked at her mother—the woman who had abandoned an art-history degree, given up dreams of working in a gallery, and stood on aching feet at a supermarket checkout counter for years. Now Jed’s eyes burned with something close to fever. “Why?” Lyra whispered. “Why do this for me?” Jed stepped closer, cupping Lyra’s face with rough hands. Her thumb traced Lyra’s freckles as if touching fragile porcelain. “Because the day you were born,” Jed said, voice breaking, “when I first held you, you were so small you hadn’t even opened your eyes—yet you gripped my finger with all your strength. The nurse said, ‘This baby has a musician’s hands.’ I laughed then. But now I know… some people are born to make their voices heard.” She stepped back and drew out a small velvet box from her apron pocket. “Take this.” Lyra opened it. Inside lay a thin silver chain with a tiny musical note. “I bought it at twenty,” Jed said softly, “with my first paycheck. I wanted to be a painter. Life had other plans. But this belongs with you.” Lyra held the pendant; the metal was warm from her mother’s body. Tears blurred her vision. “What if… what if I fail? What if I’m not good enough?” Jed’s gaze sharpened like a Montana winter sky. “Then you fail. But you fail after trying—not like your father, who was too afraid to even begin.” That night, Lyra returned to the attic. She left the light off, cradling her guitar in the moonlight. Seventh Street lay quiet below, with only an occasional passing car. In the distance, the mountains loomed like sleeping beasts. Her fingers found the strings, not to practice but to let sound spill freely—a new melody, not in a mournful minor key, but urgent, hopeful, and bright. In the dark she wrote, pencil scratching across the page: > “The day Mom sold her ring, > I said nothing. > She packed her dreams in a suitcase, > saying, Daughter, you must fly…” Halfway through, she paused and looked out the window. The town’s lone lit bar flashed its neon sign—The Saloon. Tomorrow night there would be local bands: elders covering John Denver, teenagers drinking beer and pretending they didn’t belong here. Lyra Mason did not belong there. Perhaps she did not belong in Nashville either. But tonight, for the first time, she felt she might belong somewhere larger—somewhere spacious enough for her freckles, her glasses, her calloused fingertips, and every stray note aching inside her. Downstairs, Jed softly sang Sam to sleep with You Are My Sunshine. Lyra fastened the silver chain around her neck, the little note resting cool and warm against her collarbone. She struck a chord. Then another. Music filled the attic, rupturing the town’s silence—until, in a Montana spring night, seventeen-year-old Lyra began to believe that maybe, just maybe, a train might finally stop for her.