Mayfly Melodies

Thirty-Three

Caroline

Trauma creates change you don't choose. Healing is about creating change you do choose—Michelle Rosenthal

The next few weeks were some of the oddest in Caroline's life.  She formed and unlikely friendship with Mae Laferty.  She spent time with Rhea, the insanely loud girl who'd looked in on her with her father while Noah had been away at the rodeo one weekend.  The girl had returned from a few-week long stay in Rhode Island where her grandparents had retired to and it seemed that her mouth had only gotten faster in the time that she'd been away.  And, strangest of all, Caroline had begun to speak.

After a year of silence, it was difficult for her to turn her thoughts into words and she still spent much of her time not-speaking.  Like before, there were days where she just couldn't bring herself to speak.  It was as if the neurons in her brain weren't firing correctly and the signals that connected her thoughts and mouth were broken or damaged.  Even when she did speak, the most she could stomach were one-word answers.

Still, even Caroline could see that what she'd accomplished could be considered a breakthrough.  She still wasn't entirely certain how it had come about.  All she knew was that Noah's disappearance on the anniversary of the deaths of their family members had brought her immense pain and fear and when she'd seen Bailey his name had just sort of erupted from her mouth.  There had been no thought process, no premeditated decision to utter a word, and yet it had come much more easily and painlessly than Caroline would have ever imagined.

Over the two weeks that had passed, things had changed around the Hartley ranch as well.  Bailey was a near-constant presence on the farm but this was something that Caroline did not mind.  She was never unwelcome on the property and when she wasn't with Noah, helping him with his chores or just sitting alone together, she was with Caroline.  Sometimes they communicated using their pen and paper combo and other times Caroline tried speaking.  It took a real conscious effort to make a sound but as each day passed Caroline felt more comfortable trying.

Often Caroline and Bailey worked on the songs for Bailey's demo for the record company that was considering signing her.  Out of the minimum eight songs she needed, Bailey could come up with six.  Caroline, to her credit, had written two of them completely by herself and was thrilled that Bailey had added them to her repertoire.  She wasn't certain that the music she'd written would hold up in Nashville against all of the talented songwriters available on every street corner across the city but she couldn't contain her excitement at working with Bailey.

Bailey had even rented out a local band and recording studio for the following weekend in order to begin recording and had invited Caroline along to partake in the experience.  She'd informed Caroline that recording was normally a rather dull affair filled with long hours sitting in a recording booth as the producers tried to figure out what was wrong and what was right with each song.  Still, since Bailey was producing her own demo and had only her band for guidance, Caroline was sure that the session was going to be much more interesting than anticipated.

And then there was Noah.  Caroline hadn't been entirely what to expect when he returned with Bailey after his disappearance on the anniversary of the fire.  She wasn't sure if he would be pushy or act as if he hadn't heard what had happened.  Inevitably she knew that Bailey would have told him that she'd spoken—in the back of her mind she'd already accepted the fact that Bailey had likely been passing Noah updates about how she was feeling whenever they'd met up and she'd found that she wasn't nearly as upset about it as she thought she maybe had the right to be.

Still, what had awaited her was comfort.  Noah had walked into the house and given her one of the best hugs she'd ever had, one that spoke of months of pent-up grief and sorrow and also the knowledge that they were going to make it through to the other side somehow.  They'd sat around the table that night, Caroline, Noah, and Bailey and while she hadn't been able to speak to him, she'd found that it was easier to write him notes now and they'd had their first real conversation in a year.