Guitar, roses and lyric banner on a forearm

The guitar belonged to Walt Hensley, who had left it on her counter in March with a grin and a promise to settle up once the feed mill paid him. He had not come back for it. Most people in Harlan Creek knew why, and nobody said it in front of Ada, who had sold him his first set of strings and privately thought he could have chosen better.

When the glue set she eased the bracing loose to check the join and found pencil on the inside of the wood, pressed hard and looping: because you're mine. Below it, smaller, someone had scratched a row of tally marks, twenty or thirty of them, each one a little more crooked than the last. Ada counted them twice, then put the back panel down and sat with her hands flat on the bench.

She strung it up that evening, played one open chord on the back step to test the crack, and let the note hang over the empty lot until it faded. Then she wrapped the guitar in brown paper, tied it with string, and wrote Hensley's name on the tag in capitals. On the counter she left a single red rose from Mrs Dunning, paid for, lying across the wrapping like a question nobody had asked yet.