Chapter Two
With a sigh of frustration, Leanne Miller set the phone back in its cradle and pressed her fingers to her temple.
She’d been calling her mother for hours, and despite her continued dialing, there was no answer.
Her mom was supposed to have gone to a doctor’s appointment that morning, then stopped by for dinner and birthday cake—simple, straightforward plans. But Eleanor hadn’t shown up. And now the silence on the other end of the line felt heavy.
Leanne glanced toward the brass starburst kitchen clock, its second hand ticking far too loud in the quiet house.
The clock itself was in stark contrast to her rigid life.
The beams of light catching on the brass radiated promising hope, when she felt none.
Dean was “working late” again, somewhere behind glass walls in Manhattan, and when “working” meant nursing an after-hours cocktail instead of coming home.
Upstairs, the floorboards creaked faintly with the movement of her daughter, Nora, around her room, fine-tuning yet another packing list for Yale.
Leanne crossed to the bottom of the stairs and called up, forcing her voice to sound light. “I’m heading to Grandma’s. Want to come?”
A pause. Then her daughter’s voice floated down. “No, thanks.”
That was it. No explanation, and no question as to why Leanne was going. Just a polite decline from a girl teetering on the edge of adulthood, already halfway out the door.
That made sense and was as it should be, but it still made Leanne ache a bit.
She rested her hand on the banister, fingers curling around the polished wood.
The house felt too big tonight—echoing with the quiet absence of a daughter ready to fly the nest, a family she could feel slipping through her fingers, and the steady ticktick of the clock, its secondhand slicing through the quiet like a metronome.
Dean logged hundred-hour weeks, rarely making it home in time for dinner, sometimes not bothering to come home at all.
The office couch had become his second bed.
Once Nora was gone, there’d be even less reason for him to make an appearance.
Leanne—on the verge of becoming an empty nester—tried to imagine feeling even more alone and couldn’t.
Slipping out the front door, Leanne climbed into her tidy station wagon, the leather seats still warm from the late-afternoon sun.
She started the engine, flipping on the headlights with fingers cold from nerves.
The haloed resonance floated off the brick of her house.
She backed slowly out of the driveway, slamming on the brakes as one kid and then another darted behind her car.
They were still at it—playing kick-the-can in the middle of the cul-de-sac, their laughter and apologies echoing through the warm summer air, punctuated by distant calls of mothers summoning them home for dinner.
The drive across the New York City suburb of Ossining took less than ten minutes.
Leanne wound past leafy streets and colonial houses with tidy lawns, until she reached her mother’s unassuming home.
From the outside, the residence looked just like everyone else’s.
It was only once you stepped through the doors that Eleanor’s style collided with polite society.
Immediately, Leanne noticed the garage door was left open and empty. No sign of Eleanor’s car.
Leanne cut her engine and climbed out of the Buick.
Cicadas buzzed in the trees, and the sky dimmed from a burnt orange to a bruised lavender haze.
She could almost picture her younger self arriving home after school or piano lessons.
The front porch light wasn’t on, but the faint scent of incense drifted out through an open window.
The door creaked open beneath her hand as she knocked.
Leanne frowned, her chest tightening. A few weeks ago, her mother had stopped locking the door, insisting she simply forgot.
Even had the audacity to joke, saying, “No one’s going to rob an old woman.
” But to Leanne, leaving the door unlocked was an open invitation for disaster, even if her mother did live in a nice neighborhood.
She stepped inside, her kitten heels muted against the thick carpet. The house hit her like it always did: a time capsule of chaos and charm, its scent a mix of incense, old records, and something floral—jasmine or rosewater, she could never tell.
The living room unfolded in front of her—cluttered and colorful, layers of velvet throw pillows, tapestries hanging crookedly, ashtrays balanced precariously on stacks of books.
Records leaned against the wall alongside framed black-and-white photos from decades past that she recognized and several that she didn’t: young musicians with sly smiles, concert posters peeling slightly at the edges.
She picked up one of the posters, reading the headline: The Bell of Wartime Music.
Beside the advertisement was a photo that looked very much like a younger version of her mother.
Leanne turned in a slow circle, taking in the disarray. Her mother wasn’t a neatnik, but this was…unlike her.
No one would guess a sixty-nine-year-old woman lived here. Instead, the space felt like it belonged to someone decades younger—an artist in their twenties chasing freedom.
Or someone desperately trying to hold on to their memories.
A bohemian fever dream of clashing musical eras—1920s big band met with 1960s rock and roll.
Leanne stood there, taking it all in, worry gnawing sharper at her ribs. Her mother’s world seemed stitched together by threads fraying just at the edges—beautiful, yes, but fragile in ways Leanne could no longer ignore.
“Mom?”
Her voice echoed softly through the house, but no answer came. Not even the familiar pitter-patter of Roxy’s feet. The strange little dog usually bounded out of the bedroom at the sound of company—but tonight, nothing.
The silence prickled along Leanne’s limbs.
Stepping farther inside, she scanned the space.
Besides the addition of the photos and old posters, everything appeared the same—comfortably cluttered, charming in that haphazard way only her mother could pull off.
Moving to the kitchen, she let her hand brush over the pastel-pink refrigerator, the early 1950s model her mother had insisted on keeping even when the rest of the world moved on.
Mismatched mugs filled the glass-fronted cabinets—some chipped, some with old logos and designs faded from decades of use.
Leanne reached up, opening the door, and straightened one absent-mindedly, her finger brushing over the musical chords painted there.
That had been her favorite one as a child, and she recalled many nights of tea or hot cocoa, curled up under a blanket reading a book.
Her gaze flicked to the pink refrigerator, where a memo was tacked up by a magnet in the shape of a guitar. Eleanor Bell’s initials were monogrammed in swirling purple ink at the top of the white paper. The handwritten note was unmistakably hers in black fountain ink: Don’t trust the milk.
Leanne squinted at the oddball message, her brow knitting in puzzlement. Don’t trust the milk? What did that even mean? Was it a reminder? Some sort of joke?
Leanne tugged the metal handle, opening the fridge to see a carton of milk with an expiration date of next week. The cryptic note made no sense, like so many things her mother had been saying lately.
Her unease deepened.
She made her way to the bedroom. The bed was unmade, and the ashtray on the nightstand held a lipstick-smudged cigarette burned down to the filter.
The closet door hung open, a sweater sleeve drooping out, a blouse crumpled on the floor.
Leanne scanned the contents of the hangers, most of the clothing dating back to her childhood.
And then she noticed the empty space on the top shelf—the suitcase was gone.
A cold ripple worked its way around every vertebra in her spine.
Between the strange, rambling jottings and her mother’s missing suitcase, something was wrong, really wrong.
She began riffling gently through the disarray of her mother’s things, scanning for a scribbled message, a list, anything to explain her absence.
The speed of her search and the sense of dread inside her both accelerating as the bedroom proved disappointingly devoid of any clues.
The bathroom was the same story. A half-empty bottle of champagne on the edge of the tub.
A mirror smudged with the sort of cryptic lipstick messages her mother was always leaving herself—Shine on, Eleanor—but no toothbrush in the holder.
The shelf where her mother’s favorite perfume usually sat was empty.
Leanne’s pulse quickened.
Her mother had left town without telling her. Not even a note.
That wasn’t like Eleanor. Despite being free-spirited, she always let Leanne know when she was traveling and called to check in. This…felt off.
Leanne walked back toward the family room, her stomach twisting. That’s when she spotted the paper, lying half crumpled on the floor near the record player. She bent to pick it up.
Her eyes scanned the heading.
Her mother’s name was typed neatly at the top followed by: Dementia. Early Signs.
Below was a short note from her mother’s doctor explaining the symptoms, the progression, and stating Eleanor’s official diagnosis. The doctor noted that Eleanor should speak to her family soon about care.
Leanne’s chest tightened. Her mother was losing her memories. But more than that, at this moment, she was physically lost too. Vanished from the house without a trace of anything other than her past.