Wait for Me

The morning after Merry’s visit, Reuben feels well enough to complain, telling Elle he misses the playful sister she was before their father left. The supply of butterfly weed soon runs out, and Reuben’s pneumonia symptoms return. With her mother overcome by dread, Elle hikes to Merry’s winter camp to get more medicine. Merry accompanies her back but reveals there is no more butterfly weed, as harvesting it destroys the plant. With no way to get a doctor to their remote home, the family can only wait. Two nights later, Reuben dies in his mother’s arms. In their father’s absence, Elle and Susannah must dig a grave in the frozen ground, using pots of boiling water to thaw the earth. They bury him with Susannah’s dulcimer.

In her grief, Elle begins to secretly follow the healer, Merry. Ten days after Reuben’s death, Merry visits and gives Elle a note revealing she has already sent word to Elle’s father, Hosea, about his son. Merry enters the cabin and sits with Elle’s mother, Susannah, who has been confined to her bed since the burial. Hearing her mother laugh for the first time in days, Elle realizes Merry’s healing can come from empathy rather than medicine. Later, Elle follows Merry to a river and watches from a distance as the healer lies on a rock and cries without making a sound. As Merry regains her composure, Elle feels a surge of inspiration and hears the words to her first song in her mind.

A month later, Elle continues to trail Merry, observing her work. One afternoon, she spies on Merry in an abandoned barn, where she is attempting to treat Malachi, a young boy deeply traumatized by the loss of his father, who went to Vietnam and never returned. Merry tries to embrace the boy but is struck; she then spots Elle hiding and calls her forward, gesturing for Elle to sing. Elle sings “Wayfaring Stranger,” her late brother Reuben’s favorite song. The shared sorrow in her voice soothes Malachi. For the first time, Elle has healed someone with her music. Malachi’s mother, unable to pay with money, offers Elle an old classical guitar in gratitude. Elle initially refuses but comes to understand that the act of giving is essential to their community’s survival.

Five years later, in 1969, 18-year-old Elle has become Merry’s apprentice. During those years, Elle’s father, Hosea, had returned one year after Reuben’s death, a changed man—missing a finger and emotionally distant. Unable to play his banjo, he smashed it and angrily shoved Elle away. Elle sought comfort from Merry, who taught her to play chords and melodies on her guitar. Now a smoke signal summons Merry to the isolated cabin of a reclusive cigar maker, a place she has forbidden Elle to visit. Merry again refuses to let Elle accompany her, leaving Elle feeling rejected. Elle angrily walks away, and the two do not see each other for a week. After a week with no word from Merry, Elle’s mother urges her to go find the healer. Elle goes to Merry’s cabin and finds it empty with her truck gone. Knowing Merry avoids driving after dark or during storms, Elle suspects something is wrong.

As a storm approaches, Elle hikes up the dangerous ridge to the cigar maker’s windowless cabin, where she finds Merry’s truck parked nearby. Peering through a crack in the wall, Elle sees Merry tending to a woman who looks remarkably like her—her sister. The woman has an injured arm and bruised cheek, and Elle suspects she may also have a serious illness. Overcome with shame for intruding, Elle is spotted by Merry, who storms out and furiously orders her to go home. As Elle retreats down the slick, rainy path, she slips on mossy rocks, but Merry follows and catches her, intending to drive her home. After helping Elle into the truck, Merry slips while walking around the vehicle, cracking her temple against the truck’s steel hitch. Realizing Merry is dead, Elle pulls her body into the truck and attempts to start the engine, but it floods. Overwhelmed, she abandons the scene and runs home.

The next morning, Elle returns to find Merry’s body still in the truck by the river, with her mandolin on the seat beside her. Stricken with guilt, Elle blames her own neediness for her friend’s death. She hears the same spectral whisper she first encountered when Reuben died—“Take me to the river” (94)—and is inspired to create an original song for Merry on the spot. Planning to push the truck into the deep river, she retrieves the mandolin, determined to preserve Merry’s “voice.” The chapter ends with Elle holding on to the instrument rather than allowing it to be submerged with Merry.

A brief, four-line draft of a song written by Marijohn Shaw questions why a “broken mandolin” was left behind by her absent mother. The lyrics link the instrument to feelings of abandonment and Marijohn’s inability to know her mother’s face, name, or family.

For a month after Merry’s death, Elle faithfully attempts to take her place as the mountain’s healer. Her resolve shatters when a fire sweeps through the hills in the summer of 1969, leaving 13 people with horrific burns that her remedies cannot treat. When professional rescue crews arrive and take over, Elle concludes she is not Merry and cannot continue the work. She withdraws to her bedroom, where she spends two weeks, writing 10 raw, powerful songs about her losses. She emerges and tells her mother, Susannah, that she plans to work in the mines. Susannah dismisses this as a “terrible idea,” praising Elle’s songwriting and urging her to go to Nashville to sell her music. Elle agrees, and they begin packing and saving money for the journey.

Elle leaves for Nashville in a gifted station wagon with her guitar, Merry’s mandolin, and a homemade recording of her songs. She is repeatedly rejected by radio DJs on the way. Arriving in Nashville, she sleeps in her car and tries busking outside Weston Studios but is ignored. While sick in an alley, she is found by Leo, a Black studio banjo player who offers kindness, advice on where to perform, and help finding a room. He expresses his frustration with an industry that marginalizes him. One day in late September—after three weeks of busking and with no money left—Elle is sitting outside the studio, knowing she must head home that afternoon, but a woman gives her $35 after her child damages Elle’s guitar, enough to cover another week’s rent. Shortly afterward, Josie, an ambitious secretary at Weston Studios, approaches her, revealing she is a fan. Josie gives Elle a tip: To get noticed by the studio head, Arlo Weston, she must sing at his private back entrance early the next morning.

Elle follows Josie’s advice and approaches Arlo Weston at his private entrance. She performs “Wayfaring Stranger,” and Arlo asks her to play it again, listening with his eyes closed before inviting her in. Arlo, who also has rural roots, grants her an audition. In a boardroom of male executives, Elle defies Arlo’s song choice and instead performs a wrenching, original song about Merry’s death. The men stare back in stony silence. Believing she has failed, Elle is met in the hall by Josie. When Elle says she must return home, Josie insists she stay, arguing that talent is harder to find than money. Josie leads Elle into a recording studio, where the beautiful acoustics revive her spirit. Josie confides that she, too, is a musician—a classically trained pianist—dreaming of a career in country music. In this shared moment of ambition and vulnerability, Elle feels an immediate kinship with Josie.