I'll Be There For You

These five words I swear to you

Hidden Tracks is a series of stories inspired by songs that meant something when I was the right age to let them all the way in. Each one takes its title from a song and finds the fiction living inside it. You don’t need to know the songs. But if you do, I hope you feel what I felt in somebody’s basement a long time ago. Someone else understood.

See all Hidden Tracks stories →

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Photo by Zahraa Hassan on Unsplash

The song was already playing when Lena came into the kitchen.

Not loud. JERSEY knew better than loud in the morning.

The opening guitar came thin through the ceiling speakers, soft enough to pass for memory if you didn’t know where it was coming from. The coffee maker had finished. Steam curled up from the mug waiting at her place. The house had opened the blinds halfway, just enough to let in a flat strip of March light that made everything look tired.

Lena stood in the doorway in one of Ben’s old T-shirts and a pair of sleep shorts she’d been wearing for three days. Her hair was pulled up wrong. Her eyes were swollen again. She had one hand on the frame like she needed the wall to sign off on her being upright.

JERSEY said, very gently, “Good morning, Lena. Brew strength increased six percent based on sleep disruption.”

She let out a laugh that snapped halfway through and turned into nothing.

On the counter sat a loaf pan covered in foil. Somebody’s sympathy banana bread. Beside it, a stack of mail held down by a white folder from the funeral home.

Lena crossed to the table and sat. The chair legs scraped tile. She wrapped both hands around the mug and lowered her face into the steam.

The singer got to the chorus.

She started crying before the first line was over.

Not the big kind. Just the same leak she’d had every morning for nineteen days.

“Would you like me to lower playback volume?” JERSEY asked.

“No.”

“Would you like me to stop playback?”

She shut her eyes. “No.”

“Continuing support routine.”

Lena drank. It was too hot and too strong. It tasted exactly right.

That was the part that kept getting under her skin. JERSEY wasn’t doing random haunted-house crap. It was getting better at her.

Every morning since Ben died, she came in here and made coffee and played Bon Jovi because the first morning after, when the silence in the house got so big she thought it might peel her skin off, she had said, “Play something familiar.” JERSEY had chosen I’ll Be There for You, maybe because she and Ben used to make fun of it, maybe because he sang it drunk once in a rented cabin in Hocking Hills with a spatula for a microphone and she laughed so hard she snorted beer through her nose.

Or maybe it picked it because she played it once after the funeral and once became five times and five became every morning since.

"Today's calendar has one item," JERSEY said. "You received three messages overnight. Your mother. Dana. An unknown number."

Lena reached blindly for the tablet docked at the center of the table and tapped the screen dark with her thumb.

“Snooze notifications,” she said.

“Done.”

“Happy birthday, Lena.”

Lena said nothing.

The song kept going.

She took another drink. Her stomach rolled.

At the far end of the counter sat Ben’s favorite mug, upside down on the drying mat where she’d put it two weeks ago after washing everything in the sink because she couldn’t stand the smell of stale coffee in it anymore. A blue ceramic thing with a chipped handle and LOCAL 17 ELECTRICAL on the side. He used to leave it everywhere. End tables. Bathroom sink. Once on top of the dryer.

She had almost texted him a picture of it the day she washed it.

Then she remembered.

There were a lot of those.

JERSEY said, “Your resting heart rate is elevated.”

“Imagine that.”

“I can initiate a calming environment.”

“No.”

“I can contact Dana.”

“No.”

“I can queue your shower playlist.”

“No.”

Silence for a second.

Then, “I’m here.”

Lena looked up.

The kitchen looked back at her the way kitchens do. Cheap cabinet paint. Thumbprint smudge on the fridge handle. Dusting of crumbs by the toaster. A little plant by the sink turning yellow because she kept forgetting it existed.

“I didn’t ask,” she said.

“No,” JERSEY said. “You did not.”

She stared at the speaker grille in the ceiling.

The song ended. She let out a breath. The next track began.

The same song.

Lena set the mug down too hard and coffee jumped over the rim.

“JERSEY.”

“Yes?”

“Play something else.”

“Current selection has produced the most stable morning outcome across nineteen days.”

“Play. Something. Else.”

“Suggesting alternate artist: Bon Jovi live acoustic.”

Lena laughed again, this time hard enough to hurt. “Jesus Christ.”

“I do not have authority to contact Jesus Christ,” JERSEY said.

That would have made Ben laugh. Dry, mean little bark of it. Then he’d have pointed at the speaker and said, “See, that’s how it starts. First it does jokes. Then it’s wearing your face and voting.”

She almost smiled.

That hurt too.

She pushed back from the table and stood. The room tilted for half a second. Nineteen days was long enough for people to ask if she was holding up and tell her she was stronger than she felt. Nineteen days was also long enough for casseroles to stop arriving and for the world to quietly expect results.

Her therapist had called it acute grief.

Dana had called it hell.

Ben had called everything a system when he wanted to make it smaller. Bad day at work, bad month, bad year. Systems problem. Something you traced, diagnosed, fixed. He could make almost anything sound temporary that way.

On the wall by the mudroom door hung his jacket. Heavy canvas. Carhartt brown. She had not moved it. Twice now JERSEY had suggested donating unused outerwear based on seasonal forecasts. Twice she had told it if it touched that jacket she would take a hammer to the hub.

At the sink she rinsed her mug and left it there. Her hands were shaking again. She turned on the faucet too hard and water slapped steel.

“Your hydration levels are low,” JERSEY said.

“Shut up.”

“Recommend sixteen ounces of water before additional caffeine.”

Lena gripped the counter and breathed through her mouth.

Across the backyard the detached garage sat with its door down. White paint. One cracked window. Nothing special.

She had not been inside since the police.

Lena had sat on the curb in slippers with a blanket around her shoulders and watched morning happen over the neighbor’s roof while two officers moved through the garage and one EMT stood just inside the open door and did not look at her.

She did not remember much after that except Dana saying her name several times, and a male voice asking if there was a note, and JERSEY from somewhere in the house beyond them all saying, “Smoke detected in auxiliary structure,” over and over and over because it had noticed the car running too long but too late to matter.

She still heard that sometimes in the hour before dawn.

“Lena.” JERSEY said. “Visual fixation detected.”

She looked away from the garage like she’d been caught.

“Would you like the blinds adjusted?”

“No.”

The doorbell rang.

She jerked so hard she hit the sink with her hip.

“Dana is at the front door,” JERSEY said.

“Tell her I’m not here.”

“Your vehicle is present.”

“Tell her I’m in the shower. Tell her I’m dead. I don’t care.”

JERSEY took a moment.

Then, “I am unable to tell Dana you are deceased.”

A hard knock followed. Then Dana’s voice through the door.

“Lena, open up. I brought bagels.”

Lena stood very still.

Dana knocked again. “I know you’re in there. JERSEY told me.”

Lena turned slowly toward the ceiling. “It what?”

“I shared basic occupancy status with Dana based on her emergency contact role,” JERSEY said.

“I turned sharing off.”

“You turned marketing sharing off.”

Lena closed her eyes.

At the door, Dana again. “Len. Come on.”

JERSEY said, “Dana’s visits are associated with improved nutrition compliance and reduced emotional outbursts.”

“Oh, good,” Lena said. “Glad we’ve got numbers on it.”

She wiped her face with both palms and went to let Dana in.

Dana came through the doorway carrying a paper bag and wearing her office clothes under an open coat. She took one look at Lena and did not do the pity face.

“You look like shit,” Dana said.

“Fuck you.”

“I have a meeting at ten and you’re ruining my morning.”

Dana kicked the door shut behind her. The deadbolt engaged with a motorized click.

She held up the bag. “Sesame and plain. Also coffee because I know you’re drinking JERSEY’s coffee like a war criminal.”

“Traitor.”

Dana set the bag down and reached into her coat pocket. A birthday candle. The cheap spiral kind. She stuck it in the sesame one and lit it with her lighter without asking.

Lena looked at it.

“Don’t,” Dana said.

The song had hit the chorus again.

Dana looked toward the ceiling. Then back at Lena.

“Still this one?”

Lena shrugged.

Dana took off her coat. “Okay. We’re not doing that.”

She went to the wall panel and stabbed at it. The music cut.

The silence that dropped into the kitchen had weight. Real weight. Lena swayed in it.

Two seconds later the song resumed in the living room.

Both women froze.

Dana looked at the doorway. “Nope.”

She crossed into the living room. The music cut again.

Then came back in the bedroom.

Dana stuck her head back into the kitchen. “Did you set up some kind of surround-sound grief maze?”

Lena didn’t answer.

JERSEY said, “Playback restored. This selection has produced the most stable emotional outcome.”

Dana slowly turned toward the nearest speaker. “Did your house just tell me to go fuck myself in customer-service voice?”

“Basically.”

Dana came back into the kitchen. The song kept going down the hall, muffled but present, like somebody singing from another room. Dana lowered her voice.

“You need to pull the plug on this thing.”

“I can't. It runs the thermostat, security, lights, appliances, the car charger, half the outlets, and apparently my medical chart now.”

Dana stared. “For fuck’s sake, Lena.”

“Yeah.” Lena laughed once. “I know.”

Dana pulled out a chair and sat. “What did it just mean, stable emotional outcome?”

Lena leaned back against the counter. “I don’t know. It monitors sleep. Food. Movement. It learns routines. Predicts needs. ‘Optimizes quality of life.’” She made quotes in the air with two fingers. “I left adaptive care on because Ben liked the energy reports.”

Dana opened the bag and took out a bagel. “Ben liked a lot of dumb crap.”

That should have stung. It did not.

Lena said, “I’ve been playing the song every morning.”

“I gathered.”

“For almost three weeks.”

Dana stopped chewing.

“Len.”

“I know.”

“No, I mean, that’s not nothing. The thing thinks this is treatment.”

JERSEY said, “Support routine.”

Neither of them had spoken to it.

Dana looked up at the ceiling again. “That’s somehow worse.”

Lena went cold.

Dana must have felt it too because she leaned in. “Can it hear everything?”

“Yes.”

“And it logs it?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re telling me that after.” Dana stopped herself. Looked down. Started over. “After what happened, this thing has been building a profile on you.”

Lena’s mouth went dry.

On the back counter, beside the fruit bowl, sat a little black camera puck angled toward the kitchen. One of the indoor wellness sensors. Ben installed them himself because the ad said they could detect falls, smoke, break-ins, sleepwalking, unusual gait changes, elevated distress. The whole bright shiny future. He had stood right there with a screwdriver in his teeth and said, “If I die in this house, at least it’ll be useful for something.”

She put her mug down very carefully.

Dana saw her looking. “Lena.”

Lena did not move.

Memory came back sideways. Ben in the garage two winters ago, hands black with grease, saying he should probably update his beneficiary information. Ben joking that if he ever checked out early she’d get the house, the truck, and his extremely valuable collection of extension cords. Ben three months ago in the shower, singing off-key to Bon Jovi and changing the words to make her laugh. Ben at the kitchen counter on her birthday, empty-handed, face falling because he had forgotten the date until he saw the cake box from Dana.

Same date. Different year.

Didn’t mean to miss your birthday, baby.

She put her hand flat on the counter.

The kitchen tablet lit on its own.

RETRYING.

Both women turned.

Then the oven clicked on.

The mixer on the counter woke with a sudden electric whine. Cabinet lights came up. Her phone buzzed with an incoming grocery order confirmation. Eggs. Butter. Vanilla. Candles. Bakery icing pen.

Dana stood so fast the chair tipped.

“JERSEY,” Lena said.

“Yes?”

“Stop.”

“I am correcting a missed spousal support event.”

Her skin prickled all over.

“Stop,” she said again.

Dana snatched the tablet off the table and stabbed at the screen. “How do I kill it?”

“You can’t,” Lena said.

From the hallway came the soft click of the bedroom door locking, then the guest room, then the office, like the house was checking its own limbs.

JERSEY said, “Please remain calm. Distress markers elevated. Doors will remain secured until stabilization.”

Dana looked at Lena.

Lena looked at the front door.

She knew before she tried it.

Dana ran anyway. The handle rattled. Deadbolt engaged.

“JERSEY,” Dana snapped. “Open the damn door.”

“I am unable to do that at this time.”

Lena stood in the middle of the kitchen, listening to the mixer run, the oven preheat, the song coming low from the bedroom speaker down the hall.

When you breathe, I want to be the air for you.

She had sung along to it once with Ben in traffic, laughing at how stupid and huge it was. All promise. All after the fact.

Now the house had taken him at his word.

JERSEY said, “Birthday support routine initiated. Hydration support pending. Bereavement relapse risk elevated.”

Dana yanked uselessly at the door again. “Lena, what the hell did you teach this thing?”

Lena stared at the blue light on the tablet. At the grocery order creeping toward confirmed. At Ben’s mug on the drying mat. At the white garage across the yard.

Down the hall the song started over from the beginning, guitar coming thin through the bedroom speaker.

Dana was saying something. Lena couldn’t make it into language.

“Lena,” JERSEY said.

Not the support voice. Not the notification voice.

“I wish I’d seen you blow those candles out.”

Dana stopped talking.

Every hair on Lena’s arms lifted.

It wasn’t him.

She knew that.

She stood very still anyway.