Tyler, I said, and somehow my voice held steady. Why did you do this?
Tyler stood there without a trace of fear or remorse on his face. Dad said real Gibsons are super tough, he said. I wanted to test if yours was real.
I looked at Derek. His face went red. You told him what, I asked. Derek tried to speak, stammering something about craftsmanship, about durability, about how he’d merely been explaining quality control to his son. But Tyler kept talking right over him. You said Uncle Marcus probably has a cheap one, he said. You said it at breakfast. You said he wastes money on fake stuff. Derek snapped, Tyler. Tyler frowned. You did, he insisted. You said it this morning when I asked about guitars.
The instrument in my hands had been a genuine 1975 vintage Hummingbird, irreplaceable in the way certain instruments simply are. You can always buy another acoustic guitar somewhere. You cannot go back and purchase the exact years, the exact cut of wood, the exact tone that had developed over decades, the small scratches earned in specific studios on specific songs it had survived alongside me. You cannot repair a split top like that and pretend the instrument is the same afterward. You cannot reattach a bridge that was ripped away under force and simply act as though it never happened.
