Clara Rowe lived in a cramped apartment above a bar that played loud music until three in the morning. Most nights the floor vibrated like a dying animal. She sat at her little table with her guitar leaning against the radiator and prayed. She did it the way people rub a lucky coin. She wanted a hit song. She told the ceiling just one stupid miracle please. Make it happen. She didn’t know whether God exists or not. In her inner world she went back and forth. She prayed with the seriousness of someone trying to win a fistfight using polite suggestions.

One day a melody showed up while she was cleaning a coffee mug that had been turning into a science project. A line or two wandered in while she stood staring at the dusty window. It was a love song about a magic trick. She wrote it all down. It felt suspiciously simple like a stranger who buys you a drink for no reason. She made a demo. She always did using her phone. Hal, her friend who thought himself a producer, loved it. “This one,” he said. “This one has teeth.” Things sped up after that. Too fast.

Streaming numbers climbed. People who used to ignore her suddenly asked her to lunch. She heard her own song playing in a Walmart and almost dropped her bags in disbelief. Clara said it was the prayer. She told this to friends, interviewers and to herself. Like how gamblers say the slot machine listened.

But if you looked around her place you saw the notebooks packed with scribbled lyrics. You saw the theory books by her bed. You saw the pile of demos she had recorded and thrown out and recorded again. You saw the life of someone who had been working hard and non-stop. And luck had leaned in her direction the way one sometimes passes a police car and going faster than the limit but the cop already is dealing with someone else they pulled over.

It all added up. Prayer or sweat or coincidence. Hard to say. Harder if you didn’t want to know.