Prologue

I hate winter. I hate it with a passion. All the rotten things in my life have happened in winter. I lost my parents in winter. My one and only girlfriend dumped me during the winter. Except for the contrived joviality at Christmas, most people I know are miserable during winter. And today, the final indignity. My car quit working. Perfect! I'm on my way to a job and it dies. Lovely!

I was born in Sacramento, California. We didn't do winter in Sacramento. But when my parents got drunk and piled into a power pole back on New Year's Eve, 1993, I was orphaned at age six and had to go live with my grandparents ... in Spokane, Washington. Grampa and Grams were great to me. They treated me like a son and not like a burden. I got a lot of love from them and that got me through some tough times between when I went to their home and when I finished school at eighteen.

My name is Edward Murchie, but almost everyone knows me as Ed. When I graduated from high school, there wasn't enough money to send me to state college, so I had to look for a job. I found it working in a music store. Thanks to my grandmother, I could play the piano and guitar and read music, so I was hired. The store wasn't overwhelmed with customers, but it was a job and they kept me on and I made a reasonable living as a sales clerk and music teacher. I earned enough that I could afford a place of my own. My grandparents weren't pleased with me moving out, but they were in their seventies now and I couldn't continue to be a burden to them.

I'm the first to admit I'm a loner. I'm used to being by myself a lot. That's what led me to music. My grandmother played the piano and she taught me most of what I know, including how to read music. Learning the guitar was fairly difficult for me, but I persevered and while I'm no Mark Knopfler or Eric Clapton, I can play. I picked up a few dollars during my school days giving kids lessons at their home, but that was no fun, mostly because the kids I taught didn't want to be there in the first place. When I moved out, I quit home teaching unless I was approached by someone who was genuinely interested ... preferably female.

My apartment, if you could call it that, was a loft over a general store. The entrance was up a long set of stairs along the side of the building. The place was bigger than I needed, being the full size of the store below. However, with two bedrooms and a large living room, a single bathroom and a decent size kitchen, it was far larger and better than anything I had looked at previously. Not only that, it was cheap, easy to maintain, and gave me privacy. I used the second bedroom for my music room. I bought an old Roland keyboard/synthesizer from the store for a hundred dollars, a trade-in on a newer fancier one. The store had some amplifiers and equipment that they couldn't sell, so they gave me a deal on that as well. I also had a used Gibson electric guitar that was a Christmas gift from my grandparents.

For a couple of years I did without a car. I could walk to work, or take the bus if the weather was bad. I saved my money and bought a used car, a 2003 Saturn. It had 88,000 miles and was fairly clean. I figured with the plastic body, I wouldn't have to worry about rust. I was right. However, there were other things I should have worried about.

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