That's what happened when you went on a walkabout on a quiet Friday afternoon and let yourself get dragged into a kitchen table or two.
Or possibly five. They all started blending together after a while - good food, apple cider, and understated anticipation of the evening ahead.
It was square-dance night in Margaree, and the highlight of most folks' weeks.
Hell, playing backup fiddle to Buddy tonight was going to be one of the highlights of her year.
She wiggled her fingers, working out the kinks of three decades of intense fiddling, and contemplated her inbox. Three hours until the music started, and she should probably be responsible for at least some of them.
Or not. If she ignored business for long enough, Tommy eventually got to it. What was the point of having a manager if you couldn't occasionally be an irresponsible musician?
Besides, the inbox almost always took. It very rarely gave. Cass leaned back in her chair, remembering the glow in Ellie's eyes. They would go supernova when she got to play tonight - Buddy hadn't been all that hard to convince.
Her life could use more things that glowed and gave back and filled her soul. Even some of her audiences felt like work these days. People in fancy clothes who had paid hundreds of dollars for their seats. She much preferred the ones who toasted her with a beer from the shadows of their local pub.
A future she'd run away from at nineteen, fiddle in hand and fame in her sights.
All of which was an awful lot of whining from someone who loved what she did and got paid a whacking load of money to do it. It was okay to feel tired - that's why she escaped once a year and headed for this place. The "edge of the world," as Tommy called it.
A good fiddler lived for the edges - the places where the music threatened to tumble into wrack and ruin or soar to the heavens.
Cass breathed deeply, the one remnant of a long-ago drift through the world of yoga. She also lived for the quiet moments, the comfortable ones. Tonight would be a several-hours-long gift of those. Sitting on a rickety chair, playing with the one man she'd never out-fiddle, both of them background for fun, chatter, and a lively tumble of people following the square-dance call on the dance floor. Not taken for granted, exactly - just a comfortable part of the fabric of life in this cold, hard rock of a place. A gift she cherished beyond measure.
She couldn't live here - but to visit was pure, soul-filling pleasure.
And tonight she would try to say thank you. The Scottish ancestry of most of Margaree's inhabitants didn't lend itself to big displays of emotion, so Rosie would have to speak for her.
Her fingers idled on the laptop keys, restless. Readying. Maybe it was time to do some shopping - Mum's birthday was coming up. Cass pulled up her browser and then chuckled. Mum would faint if the Internet started sending her presents. Maybe Dave would part with his recipe for porridge bread. Mum would consider that a very worthy gift.
The small light in her chat window was glowing purple again. Cass switched over and opened a coding window - she was feeling distractible. "What are you on about now, little purple shadow?"
She snickered as it flashed at her twice. Ghostie with a sense of humor. With a couple of quick keystrokes, she made the text size bigger. Impromptu 2 a.m. fiddling sessions weren't increasing her sleep quotient any - no point squinting.
Huh. The log file was very interesting. Cass reached for the bar of excellent chocolate she'd wheedled out of Dave on her way up. Digestive aid for the beef-stew overload.
She'd hitched a little ride on the Internet bug that had been following her around. The surprise was that apparently the bug had noticed. There were several logged attempts to shake her rider - not serious ones, by the looks of them. Just testing.
"Hmm, we've seen each other now, have we?" Cass dug deeper into the scrolling lines of the log file and wondered, for the umpteenth time, what her life might have been like if she'd discovered computers before she picked up a fiddle. Carefully, she scanned the tracker's source code. Competently done, and nothing appeared malicious.
A harmless virtual fly, following her around the ether from somewhere in California.
Curious, that. She leaned forward, peering at her screen. The heart of the ghostie's coding was a