Chapter Four
Eleanor hadn’t expected buying a plane ticket to be so easy.
She simply walked up to the Pan American airline counter and paid in cash—an entire wad of bills she’d kept tucked in a handkerchief drawer in the back of her closet.
The woman behind the counter barely paid her any attention.
Within minutes, Eleanor was holding a ticket to California. No complications.
Almost too simple for something so…monumental.
She boarded the plane with her guitar, hoisting it carefully into the overhead rack with the help of a flight attendant and whispering a silent prayer that, even though it was in its hard case, it wouldn’t get crushed mid-flight.
Then she slid into her window seat, where she was soon joined by a young man in a narrow tie and a college-aged girl wearing bell-bottoms and wire-rimmed glasses.
The girl reminded Eleanor of Nora—not so much in looks but because she radiated the same quiet, restless ambition.
For a fleeting breath, guilt threatened to bubble up inside Eleanor.
She pictured her daughter arriving at the house, trying to make sense of where she’d gone.
But the feeling passed. Eleanor had spent the majority of her adult life doing for others, making sure Leanne felt secure and loved.
Now it was time to do something for herself.
She unwrapped a peppermint and popped it into her mouth, the cool sting spreading across her tongue. She offered the tin to her seatmates. The businessman accepted one with a nod of thanks. The girl declined, flipping a page in her book, lost in whatever world was printed in her lap.
The plane taxied down the runway at about four thousand miles per hour. Eleanor gripped the armrests as if that might stop the impending crash. She hadn’t remembered until right now—this was her first time flying.
The thought startled her. The process had felt so smooth, so shockingly easy, that she hadn’t even stopped to realize she was doing something she’d never done before.
The engine’s roar built to a howl, rumbling the blue-cushioned seat beneath her. Then they lurched forward, tilting up into the sky.
She was airborne.
For the first time in decades, she felt the sharp ache of possibility crack open inside her.
Was she flying back in time—to a version of herself she’d never gotten to fully become? Or forward into a future that still had room for change?
Maybe both.
The young man beside her must have noticed her white-knuckled grip on the armrest. He reached over and gently patted her hand.
“You okay, ma’am?”
She turned to him, blinking. Then she smiled. A real one. Wide and a little wild.
“Never better,” Eleanor replied.
“Where are you headed?” the young man asked, his voice easy, casual.
Eleanor shifted in her chair, her lips twitching. “Newport Pop Festival.”
Saying it aloud for the first time was freeing and a little rebellious, and his reaction was worth the admission.
His eyebrows lifted, a grin hitching the corner of his mouth. “Are you meeting someone there?”
Eleanor tutted, giving him a sidelong glance. Did he really believe the only way it was possible for her to attend the festival was with someone else? Likely, he thought someone younger. “You sure do ask a lot of questions.”
He blushed slightly, caught off guard by her bluntness, and chuckled. “Just curious, ma’am. Can’t quite picture my grandma heading to a pop music festival is all.”
“Well,” she said, unwrapping another peppermint, hoping to settle her stomach, “maybe you should ask your grandma if she’s a fan of Jimi Hendrix.”
He grinned. “I think I will—soon as I get off this plane.” There was a brief pause before he asked, “Do you play music?”
“I did,” Eleanor said softly, her eyes drifting to the clouds beyond the window, noting one resembling a rabbit.
She loved to look at the clouds and imagine the possibilities of what creatures might float by—a game she’d played with Leanne when her daughter still allowed herself to have an imagination.
Unbidden, her fingers tapped against the armrest, itching as if they could still feel the fingerboard beneath them. She thought back to fairgrounds shows and vaudeville stages, the weight of a guitar strap across her shoulders, the way a song once flowed from her like water.
“Do you still?”
A beat. Then, “I think I do.”
He tilted his head, bemused. “Think?”
For a second, Eleanor faltered. The memories blurred—not lost, but jumbled.
But then she saw herself, just yesterday, standing in her closet, pulling the old Gibson from its hiding place, her fingers brushing the strings.
She remembered the way it had come back to her—like muscle memory, like breath.
The girl who played had never really left. She’d just been quiet for a while.
“I do,” she said finally, with more conviction. “I do play.”
“I’m sure you’re wonderful.”
Eleanor smiled at that, surprised by how much she wanted someone—anyone—to hear her. “Would you like to hear me play?”
“Are you performing at the festival?”
She laughed, warm and unguarded. “I doubt they’ve got a spot saved for me.”
“I heard there’s going to be a free stage for anyone who wants to jam,” he said. “You could sign up.”
Eleanor raised an eyebrow, amused. “That so?”
He nodded, earnest now. “Absolutely. You should do it.”
She let the thought settle like a stone dropped in water. An open mic. A crowd. A chance.
Why shouldn’t she?
She looked out the window again. The sun was just beginning to dip, casting golden light across the airplane’s wing.
“I just might,” she said.
“Do you have your guitar with you?” the young man asked.
Eleanor tilted her head, narrowing her eyes. “How do you know I play guitar?”
He nodded toward her hands. “The pick,” he said. “Dead giveaway.”
She looked down at her fingers, where she held on to her old chestnut-colored guitar pick, with “The Gibson” engraved on one side, worn down from her thumb rubbing across it. She smiled.
“Well, aren’t you observant.”
“Let’s hear it then, ma’am.”
Without hesitation, Eleanor stood, reaching into the overhead storage rack and pulling her guitar case down, careful not to jostle it. A muffled bark erupted from underneath the seat in front of her and inside her half-zipped carry-on bag.
Heads turned in her direction.
Roxy. Whom she’d snuck onto the plane…
She bent down to the soft tote just enough to peek inside. “Shh,” she whispered. “You’re a stowaway, remember?” She handed her dog a biscuit from the outside pocket, and Roxy greedily gobbled it up.
Passengers craned their necks, a few smiling, some shaking their heads, but Eleanor was already kneeling in the aisle.
She opened the guitar case and ran her hand along the smooth wood—mahogany darkened by age, the scent of worn lacquer and tobacco still clinging faintly to the grain.
Her fingers lingered over the delicate inlay of the name carved into the headstock: Euterpe.
She’d named the guitar decades ago, after the Greek goddess of music, back when she believed naming things gave them power.
“What do you want to hear?” she asked, tuning the Gibson with deft, practiced fingers.
“‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’!” shouted a child from a few rows back.
Eleanor laughed, nodding. “All right, maestra.”
She plucked the familiar notes, slow and sweet, giving the nursery rhyme a gentle blues twist. The cabin filled with giggles and scattered applause. A chorus of other requests followed—“Old MacDonald,” “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”—and she played each with theatrical flair.
Then someone called out, “Something classical!”
Eleanor smiled with pride, her mind percolating for a second, and then she easily shifted into the opening bars of Beethoven’s “Für Elise”—Henry’s favorite.
Her fingers danced along the strings. The melody rang out crisp and bright, her years of playing whispering through every note, every night of playing in the twilight with lightning bugs dancing around.
The contrast between the playful children’s songs and the structured elegance of Beethoven lifted her heart along with the memory she wished to freeze in front of her like a picture.
And then—without thinking, without asking—she eased into something more modern.
“Piece of My Heart,” originally recorded by Erma Franklin, and recently covered by Janis Joplin.
The chords emerged, fierce and electric.
The song had been a regular companion on the radio lately, Janis and Erma both having the kind of voices that made you feel like your ribs were cracking open just to make room.
Eleanor didn’t have sheet music; she didn’t need it.
She’d played this one alone, countless nights in the dark, until the shape of it lived in her bones.
Someone in the back of the plane stood and belted out the chorus:
“Take another little piece of my heart, baby!”
Another voice joined. Then another. Before long, the entire back half of the plane was humming and clapping along. Eleanor kept strumming, her heart soaring with every note, the whole cabin echoing with a chorus of strangers who suddenly felt like a band, like the audiences she missed playing for.
By the time they touched down, she had half a dozen new friends, three promises to find her at the festival, and one woman who asked for her autograph—“just in case.”
All that was left now was figuring out how to get onstage.
That part, Eleanor suspected, might take a little more magic.