“I didn’t know it was really that much.”
“You knew it was mine.”
He stared at the ground.
That was all I said to him.
He was nine.
That explained why he had trusted his father’s cruelty and turned it into an experiment.
It did not erase what he had done, but it told me where the lesson had begun.
Derek was the adult.
Derek had planted the idea.
Derek would carry the cost.
I left the lakehouse before lunch.
No one tried to stop me.
The following morning, I took the Gibson to Aaron Bell, a luthier in Louisville who had worked on it twice before.
He placed the pieces on a padded bench and examined them beneath a bright lamp.
He did not say everything could be fixed.
He did not tell me it was just wood.
He ran one finger beside the split, checked the torn bridge plate and studied the damage around the neck joint.
Finally, he removed his glasses.
“I can make parts of it look like a guitar again,” he said.
“I cannot make it the instrument you brought me last year.”
The sentence hurt more than the appraisal.
The Hummingbird had traveled with me through fifteen years of sessions, bad clubs, small victories and long nights when music was the only thing in my life that made sense.
Its value was not only the amount I had paid.
But money was the language Derek respected.
Aaron prepared a written report.
Catastrophic structural damage.
Restoration economically unreasonable.
Comparable replacement value: approximately $8,000.
I photographed every page and sent copies to an attorney named Lena Price, a friend who had handled contracts for several local musicians.
She listened to the lakehouse recording once.
“He keeps changing his story,” she said.
“He thought everyone would protect him.”
“They did, until they thought you might touch his Mercedes.”
That afternoon, Lena sent Derek a formal demand for the replacement value of the guitar and the appraisal fee.
She included a transcript of his statements and gave him ten business days to respond before we considered further action.
Derek called me six minutes after receiving it.
I let the call go to voicemail.
His first message was angry.
“You are blowing this completely out of proportion.”
His second was softer.
“Call me before Clare sees this.”
His third arrived after Clare had clearly seen it.
“We can work something out as a family.”
That phrase appeared whenever someone wanted me to accept less than accountability.
I did not call him back.
Clare called that evening.
She began with silence.
Then she said, “Are you really going to sue my husband?”
“I asked him to pay for what he caused.”
“He didn’t swing the guitar.”
“He dared a nine-year-old to prove it was fake.”
“He says he was joking.”
“Tyler did not hear a joke.”
She exhaled sharply.
“Eight thousand dollars will hurt us.”
I looked across my studio at the empty guitar stand.
