Chapter Text
The town doesn’t know what to do with music anymore.
Not since Wicks died.
It’s not that sound disappeared—trucks still rattle down the road, wind still worries the trees at the edge of town, glasses still clink behind the bar—but music, the kind that asks for something in return, feels like a trespass now. Like joy is an imposition. Like grief has squatted in every familiar place and refuses to be rushed out, a sorrow with a season it refuses to keep.
So when you arrive, guitar case in hand and too many boxes for one person, people stare.
They don’t mean to. They just do.
You rent the little place near the treeline, the one with the warped porch boards and a view of the church steeple if you lean out the kitchen window just right. You tell yourself it’s temporary. You always do. But something about the quiet here is dense, almost watchful, like a silence that has learned how to wait, and it settles into your bones faster than you expect.
The bar is the only place that feels alive after sunset.
It’s where the town gathers to pretend it’s still the same—low lights, cheap beer, a jukebox that hasn’t been updated since the early 2000s, forever threatening Springsteen or Cash if someone feeds it the wrong coin. When the owner asks if you want to play a set on Fridays, you say yes before thinking too hard about it. Music has always been the one thing you trust yourself to offer without apology, a small sacrifice, but an honest one.
The first night you play, people listen like they’re afraid to breathe too loudly.
You start gentle. Nothing flashy. A few original songs—melancholy, but not hopeless. Folk-plain, almost hymn-adjacent, built on chords that feel older than you are. You keep your eyes half-lidded, voice low and warm, letting the words do the reaching for you. By the time you finish, the room is quiet in a way that feels…intent.
Then someone claps.
Then another.
By the end of the set, the bar feels lighter. Not healed. Just—less alone.
That’s when you notice him.
He’s sitting at a corner table, untouched drink in front of him, hands folded like he’s afraid they’ll give something away if he lets them move too freely. He looks out of place and entirely at home all at once—collar stark against dark clothing, posture careful, eyes far too intent for casual listening, as if he’s learned that words weigh something once spoken.
A priest.
You almost laugh.
After the set, he approaches slowly, like he’s worried you might vanish if he startles you. Up close, you notice the tiredness first. Not exhaustion—something heavier. Something that’s learned how to live in a person, the kind of wear that comes from listening too closely for too long.
“Thank you,” he says, voice soft but steady. “For tonight.”
You shrug, slipping your guitar back into its case. “Thanks for listening.”
A beat.
“I’m Jud,” he adds. “Father Jud.”
You give him your name. He repeats it, like he’s testing the sound of it in his mouth, as if names still mean something sacred here.
“You’re new,” he says.
“Is it that obvious?”
He smiles—not wide, not easy, but real. “This town notices new things. Especially lately.”
There’s something about the way he says lately that feels like a door left ajar. You don’t ask. Instead, you gesture vaguely toward the bar.
“Didn’t peg this place as…parish-adjacent.”
He huffs quietly at that. “Neither did I, at first.”
Another pause. Not uncomfortable. Just careful.
“I don’t think I’ve heard music like that here before,” he says. “It felt…necessary.”
The word lands somewhere tender in your chest.
“I’m glad,” you reply. “I think.”
He hesitates, then—almost shyly—“If you’re not busy Sunday… you could come to Mass. Not for any obligation. Just—” He gestures between the two of you, then back toward the space where your music had been. “We could talk after. I’d like that.”
You glance toward the door, where the night presses close against the windows, black and thick as a held confession, then back at him. You haven’t been to church in a long time. You’re not sure you’d know how to sit still through it.
But something about Father Jud—about the way he asked, like it was an invitation rather than a summons, an asking instead of a command—makes you nod.
“Okay,” you say. “Sunday.”
His smile this time is brighter. Softer.
“Good,” he says. “I’ll save you a seat.”
That night, back in your little house by the trees, you write a new song.
It’s not overt. Not yet. Just a melody that circles something unnamed. A voice that lingers on words like grace and hunger and waiting, as if the wanting itself might count as prayer. You don’t know who it’s for.
But you have a feeling he’ll recognize it when he hears it.