“Will you miss Gran?” I ask Dad at the edge of town.

He doesn’t shift his gaze from the road ahead. “My mum was old, and it was time.” If he wasn’t driving, he’d reach for his wallet. Usually when he doesn’t know what to say, he gives me money to buy CDs. I’ve got a music collection that takes up an entire wall of my room. Bach to Veruca Salt and everything good in between.

I work after school at Old Gus’s Secondhand Record and CD Store, so I get first pick when the good stuff comes in. Gus teaches me the guitar. When he’s busy, sometimes his wife, Beth, gives me singing lessons. She’s the one who told me what software and keyboard I needed to record my own music. It took a whole lot of saving and saying things to Dad like “Let’s talk about the birds and the bees,” but I got the money.

I packed everything in the trunk this morning. Computer, keyboard, iPod, dock, CDs that I haven’t had time to load, this nifty little record player I found at a flea market, my favorite records. “Do you have everything, Charlotte?” Dad asked before he started the car. I’ve been getting the urge lately to say things that mean something to see if Dad gets it, so I said, “All I’ve got is in the trunk.” He nodded and started the car and I thought about me and him. Words floated in my head like they do when I’m getting an idea for a song. Words like smoke and rain.

“See if you can find anything on the radio,” Dad says after I ask about Gran.

I search around for a station. “Nothing but empty air.” I replay the CD mix I made for the trip.

I’ll miss Gran enough for both of us. She always took a little time off from the milk bar when I visited. I’d play songs for her while she hung out washing or worked in the garden. I sang softly while the smell of lavender drifted across the day. Gran’s favorite was this cover I did of a Pink Daze track, “Smashed-Up World.” Watching her get on down to the explicit version, I used to say that old people don’t always lose their groove. But then sometime the year before last she lost it and seven months ago she died.

Most years I stay in the country till about halfway through January. Dad heads back to the city after Boxing Day. “I have to work,” he says, starting the car before he’s kissed me goodbye. I watch him drive away and I can almost taste the chocolate cake someone else’ll be eating.

This Christmas he’s taken time off from the restaurant to help Grandpa over the busy season, so we’re here together till the twentieth of January. Six extra days might not seem like a lot but it’s a long time in this place without friends or Gran. It’s a long time if Dahlia keeps up the silent treatment she started last week and doesn’t call or text me this summer.

“Who’s this?” Dad asks when a catchy tune comes on my CD. We pass the skeleton tree that never has leaves, no matter what the time of year. Bare gray branches wave us on. “No one you know, Dad,” I say.

It’s me.