Ryan Flaherty was a lost kid. His brothers had sports, which he didn’t like so much. His father had crosswords, which were often too difficult with his limited vocabulary.

When he was in seventh grade, his English teacher, young and pretty Miss Maple, assigned a reading of Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. The other kids in his class scoffed at the friendship between two deaf men and the way that their separation affected the small town they lived in. Ryan didn’t. He latched into a certain character named Mick Kelly who befriended one of the deaf men in her own weird and selfish way that only teenagers can get away with.

Mick had an okay and sometimes difficult life. He found her relatable in the sincerest of ways, and when he read

That was her, Mick Kelly, walking in the daytime and by herself at night in the hot sun a din the dark with all the plans and feelings. This music was her—the real plain her—this music did not take a long time or a short time. It did not have anything to do with time going by at all. She sat with her arms around her legs, biting her salty knee very hard. The whole world was a symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen.

He understood. Everything he’d ever felt about the world had been put into words. He carried Mick Kelly with him when he began to give into his musical inclinations.

The first instrument he ever played was his mother’s old, dusty, out of tune Gibson L-50 Sunburst Archtop from the 30’s. The frets were cracked and the strings were on their way to being rusty, but he had the music in him that needed to find its way out or else he’d burst into a thousand little pieces, scattered about by the harsh New Hampshire coastal winds.

He overturned an old milk crate and sat down in the dark but tidy basement. The sunlight that came through the small rectangular windows shone upon him like a spotlight. It gave him confidence to start. He pictured himself in the Round at the Bluebird Cafe down in Nashville, playing for his father, brothers, enthralled strangers, and most of all, for Mick Kelly.

The previous summer, the Flahertys took a trip to Nashville. His brothers enjoyed the sights and the excitement of being in a new place, but no one appreciated the sounds quite like Ryan. Country music wasn’t his thing, but the blues sure were, and so too was the integrity and enthusiasm of a genuine performer. He had dreamed of being like them, the men and women he saw pour out their hearts and lay bare their souls for complete strangers in the Round, but he had always left those dreams as dreams. He never dared to imagine a reality for fear of rejection and being talentless.

That is, until he read about Mick Kelly and the way that music burrowed into her soul. The way that

She wished there was some place where she could go to hum it out loud. Some kind of music wasn’t too private to sing in a house cram full of people. It was funny, too, how lonesome a person could feel in a crowded house.

Lonesome. Lonesome in a crowded house. That’s how it was for Ryan Flaherty that late autumn afternoon. His brothers were playing kickball in the yard. His father was bent over the Sunday edition of the New York Times crossword, lost in a world he wouldn’t return from until it was complete. And Ryan was left to his own devices. He spent some time on his bed, reading his assigned novel, and when he got to the part where Mick Kelly felt lonesome, it all just clicked. He finished that chapter and put his mother’s weathered old bookmark in place, taking care not to rip it in the process. It was one of the few things he had left of hers and he had a mind to cherish it forever.

He looked out his second-story bedroom window and saw that his brothers were still going strong in their game. The mild temperature and bright sunny day meant they’d be at it until nightfall, maybe later.

He pulled on his dirty green chucks and walked quietly downstairs, taking care not to step in the wrong place, lest the stair create and break his father’s concentration. On his way to the basement, he peeked into the dining room at his father, who was sitting with newspapers stacked and spread out the length of the table, head resting on his hands, with a pen in his mouth as he searched his brain for the answer to eight across.

Ryan rounded the corner into the kitchen and stood for a moment at the top of the stairs, thinking about how much he missed his mother and how lonesome he and Mick Kelly felt in the families that didn’t quite understand them, but loved them just the same.

He decided that the sunlight filtering in through the basement windows was all he needed and descended the stairs, taking care not to step on any creaks, which was much more difficult as these stairs were old and rotting in the musty and damp unfinished basement.

At the foot of the stairs, he turned right and walked toward his mother’s guitar cabinet. Ever since she passed away, the boys had been forbidden to touch her things because the memory of her was too fresh for their father to bear. Still, he had to feel that old guitar’s weight. He had to hold its dusty body in his hands and he had to feel that there was some part of her that could still be alive somewhere.

He turned over the milk crate and sat down with the guitar. He started humming that old Muddy Waters song his mother would sometimes absentmindedly sing aloud as she washed the dishes—Honey Bee.

He put his fingers on the strings and it all came out of him, a little messy at first, but after a few tries, it was nearly perfect. He sang.

Sail on, sail on my little honey bee, sail on. Sail on, sail on my little honey bee, sail on. I don’t mind you sailing, but please don’t sail so long.

And all at once he felt her there, his mother. And he felt Mick Kelly wasn’t so lonesome anymore because he wasn’t so lonesome anymore.

He looked up and his father was standing at the foot of the stairs weeping. Ryan kept playing. His father sang.

I hear a lot of buzzing, sound like my honey bee. I hear a lot of buzzing, sound like my honey bee. She been all around the world making honey, but now she is coming back to me.