I.

When Ricky arrived back at the apartment after leaving the club, he removed his tie and loosened the collar of his shirt. He went to the living room and removed Rick's sheet music from the coffee table, stacking it neatly on the desk in the corner. He went to his room and picked up the guitar that stood in the corner next to his conga; both had gone untouched since he'd come back to New York and neither had been played since Lucy's death.

He looked at the guitar for a moment, his fingers smoothing over the strings, before carrying it back out to the living room, along with some of the unused music parchment that had been sitting on top of his own desk. He stuck a pencil gingerly over his ear.

Ricky sat on the floor in front of the coffee table with his guitar, something that took slightly more care and effort that it had when he was a younger man. He began to scratch some preliminary notes on the parchment and smiled gently. "You used to tell me that all my paper and pencils and thin's all over the table and the floor made a mess," he chuckled. "And when little Ricky started to imitate me, it only got bigger. But deep down, I think you din't mind. 'Specially when I was writin' somethin' for you."

He continued to write with the guitar on his lap in front of him, occasionally stopping to play what he'd written to see how it sounded so far. He tinkered with the notes, played again, continued writing and repeated the process throughout.

After two hours of laboring at the coffee table, Ricky played the entire song through on his guitar. He smiled, happy with the arrangement he'd composed.

But he wasn't through. Resting the instrument beside him, he went to work laying lyrics underneath the music. Historically, he wrote lyrics in Spanish and then sometimes translated them to English, especially if his agent or producers stressed the importance of appealing to his American audience. This time, he began writing in English from the beginning, as he had done the handful of times he'd written a song especially for his wife.

Ricky worked for an hour more on the lyrics. At the end of the song, in the blank space of parchment on the final page of the music, he signed his name with a flare, as was his custom on his original pieces. "I hope you like it," he said quietly.

Feeling tired from the lack of sleep the previous night, the long day and the work he'd just completed, Ricky stood up slowly and walked with his guitar to his bedroom, leaving the song on the coffee table.

II.

When Rick came home after his performance, he stopped to peak in at his father, who was again asleep in bed. He closed the door slightly and headed down the hall, stopping as he caught a glimpse of the living room. He raised an eyebrow because it seemed that all his sheet music was gone, replaced by a few neat pages in the center of the coffee table.

Rick glanced back at his father's room before walking into the living room and sitting on the couch, picking the pages up. He smiled when he realized what he was looking at. His father had come home and written a song! He wanted to get his guitar so he could play it, but he didn't want to wake Ricky.

Instead, he sat back on the couch and started to skim the lyrics. He read, mouth agape at the intensely personal and heartfelt words. He started to feel that perhaps he SHOULDN'T be reading it, regarding it as a private love note from a heartsick man to a woman who could not be his. And yet, he couldn't STOP reading it. It was quite possibly the most beautiful thing he'd ever read and he hadn't even heard the music yet.

When he had finished, Rick set the song back down on the coffee table and sat quietly in the dimly lit room. He knew that his father loved his mother. It had never been a secret. And the way Ricky had been grieving for her could only be born of a deep seeded romance which he never believed would end. But to see it in words, in black and white, definitive terms was something different. Perhaps it was because Rick had not yet been in love, but he almost couldn't get his mind to understand how one person could feel so incomplete without the other.

III.

When morning came and Ricky sat up in bed, squinting at the light, he sighed. He had hoped to have another dream of Lucy in the night, but none that he remembered arrived. It was alright, he thought. She was with him. He believed that.

He rose from bed, planning to make breakfast for his son again. As he reached to open the bedroom door, he heard the lovely sound of Rick's guitar, playing what Ricky recognized to be the lilting notes of the song he'd written the night before. He walked out to the hall and followed the music into the living room.

Ricky paused in the entryway, smiling and watching his son play the music of the song that lay out on the coffee table in front of him.

Hearing the small creak in the floor that Ricky's footsteps had made, Rick stopped playing and looked up. "I hope you don't mind me playing your song."

Ricky shook his head and walked the rest of the way into the room, sitting beside his son on the couch. "No, I dun't mind. Do you like it?"

Rick looked down at the music. "I think it's incredible." He turned to his father. "You should record it, Dad."

Ricky scoffed. "No, I'm retired. Anyway, my voice doesn't sound as good as it used to."

Rick set his guitar down. "That's not true, Dad, you could record that song and it would be amazing. You could write harmonies for the instruments in the orchestra and make an arrangement."

Ricky looked at his son, whose eyes were bright and full of ideas. "You could sing it…"

Rick shook his head vigorously. "No. There's no way that song would have the same meaning with me singing it. It wouldn't be the same. You wrote it, you feel it. You need to be the one to sing it."

Ricky sighed. "I just wrote it to get the feelin's out, son. I wrote it for your mama. She knows I wrote it."

Rick took the pages into his hand. "Don't you think she'd want to hear it?"

Ricky took the music from Rick. He looked at the notes and the lyrics for a moment, then back at his son. It seemed very important to him that Ricky record this song.

With the pages still in his hand, Ricky stood up slowly and walked to the phone that hung in the kitchen.

Rick watched him dialing, wondering what his next move was.

With the phone to his ear, Ricky stood waiting before a smile crossed his face. "Buenos dias, amigo! Mira, se que ibamos a cumplir para el almuerzo. Pero puede traer Tony y Esteban, y nos vemos en el club en su lugar?"

Rick tilted his head, hearing his father's request to what must've been Marco on the phone.

Ricky nodded. "Si, si. Que bueno, gracias. Nos vemos." He hung up the phone and smiled at Rick.