Deleted Scenes

On this page, bits that I cut out of the Ash Grove books for var­i­ous rea­sons will final­ly see the light of vir­tu­al day. It always hurts to cut mate­r­i­al that I like, even when I know it’s for the best, so I’m glad that my lit­tle orphaned snip­pets can find a home here.

Casting Shadows: “Kiss From a Rose” (mild-ish spoilers)

This exchange between William and Sheila was cut for that most dry and bor­ing of rea­sons: legal­i­ties. If I had quot­ed as much as I want­ed to from “Kiss From a Rose,” I would have need­ed to seek out the lyrics’ copy­right hold­er and obtain the rights to quote from them, and blah blah lawyer mon­ey blah. To avoid the whole prob­lem, I rewrote the part of the scene where William and Sheila argue about Seal’s lyrics… but I real­ly like this exchange bet­ter than their dis­cus­sion of “Bar­bara Allen,” from the fin­ished book.

One after­noon she dropped by the music room on her way to prac­tice. William had promised to join her, but he was run­ning late work­ing on a project for Joy.

“I’m putting togeth­er a CD of music for Joy to think about for her wed­ding,” he explained. “I’ve just fin­ished a new arrange­ment of a waltz for their first dance, and I want­ed to get it done before she comes by this after­noon. Want to hear it?”

“Sure.” She fold­ed her long legs up on a ris­er and lis­tened as he strummed the intro on his acoustic gui­tar. Then she start­ed to laugh.

“‘Kiss From a Rose’? That’s, like, the cheesi­est song in the world.”

“I like it,” he said, unruf­fled. “And it seems per­fect for Joy and Tan­ner.”

“Why?”

“The lyrics. A grave, a rose, and a kiss: it’s the night they met, all in there.”

She looked at him. “There’s no grave in the song.”

“Yeah, there is. ‘I com­pare you to a kiss from a rose on the grave.’ It’s like a throw­back to ‘Bar­bara Allen’ and those old folk bal­lads.”

“It’s not ‘grave,’ it’s ‘gray.’ Like the gray­ing tow­er in the first line.”

“That makes no sense.”

She was start­ing to lose her patience. “It’s not sup­posed to make sense. It’s just a stu­pid pop song.”

He was a lit­tle offend­ed by this. Pop songs were poems, or at least the good ones were—and not high­brow pre­ten­tious stuff like in the lit­er­ary mag­a­zines, but poems for every­one. He was on the point of say­ing so when she added, “Any­way, what does it have to do with Joy and Tan­ner?”

“Well, you know, that’s what hap­pened that first night,” he said, sur­prised that she had to ask. “She was tak­ing a rose from Josi­ah Cavanaugh’s grave, and he found her there and kissed her.”