Chapter Five
It had been Dean’s idea to take the Lincoln Continental.
Leanne had assumed they’d hop on a plane and chase her mother to California with tickets booked and bags checked, like reasonable people. But Dean, ever the strategist, had offered something different.
“If your mother drove cross-country, you might run into her along the way. Besides, this is the perfect chance to get Nora alone,” he’d contended. “Talk to her. Really talk. About her future.”
An unexpected suggestion from a man who spent most of his life behind glass walls in Manhattan. Dean was distant on the best days—home in body, absent in almost every other way. But he wasn’t wrong.
There had been a growing silence between Leanne and Nora for months.
A cold draft of emotional distance neither of them seemed willing to name.
At the end of the summer, Nora would leave for Yale, beginning her launch into life.
The part where she peeled away. The part where she figured out who she was and wanted to become.
The part where she might find a reason never to come home again.
Leanne wasn’t ready for that.
She was proud that Nora would be among Yale’s first class of women—making history just by unpacking her books.
But that pride wouldn’t keep Leanne warm at night.
Pride wouldn’t replace the sound of her daughter’s footsteps overhead or the giggles as she gossiped with her girlfriends on the telephone.
Leanne carried her suitcase down the stairs, the worn handle warm in her trembling palm.
A trace of Aqua Net and pressed linen lingered in the hallway, the scent of them setting off into the unknown.
The more time that passed without knowing what had happened to her mother, the less Leanne was able to quell the shaking of her hands.
Dean was waiting at the door—buttoned-up, unreadable. He took the suitcase from her without a word and carried it to the trunk of the cherry-red Continental, the chrome grille catching the early morning light like a sneer.
“Remember,” he said, closing the trunk with a solid thunk. “This is a great opportunity.”
Leanne nodded. What she really wanted to do was ask: When will you take the opportunity to get to know your daughter?
Or better yet: When will you make time to know me again?
But she didn’t say any of it. She never did.
They hadn’t been on a vacation in years. Hadn’t been on a date in nearly as long. He was already walking away, checking his watch, silently declaring that handling this situation was just another box to tick in a day full of needed checkmarks. Meanwhile her mother could be dead in a ditch.
Leanne lingered on the porch, breathing in the scent of summer and possibilities, trying to quell the pounding of her heart behind her ribs.
She refused to indulge in bitter thoughts about her husband or terrifying thoughts of her mother.
Not when she was about to embark on a cross-country road trip with her daughter.
Because as much as she hated to admit it, Dean was right.
This was an opportunity. Maybe it was her last real chance to close the growing gap between her and Nora.
And, they were going to find her mother in one piece.
Resolute on those two things, she went to stand beside, but not really next to, her husband and the car.
The front door swung open, and Nora bounded out and down the porch steps, suitcase in hand, canvas backpack slung over a shoulder. She looked up at her parents, her smile flickering as she sensed the tension in the air.
Were they really that obvious?
Leanne slid toward her husband, slipping her arm through his and resting her head lightly on his shoulder. The gesture felt stiff and performative, like something from a magazine ad: “Perfect Family Sends Daughter Off in Style.”
“Do you have to do that out here?” Nora muttered, rolling her eyes and stuffing her suitcase into the trunk.
As she tossed her backpack onto the front seat, Dean stepped away from Leanne and held out his arms. “Come here, kiddo.”
Nora sank into the embrace automatically, the way she had since she was small. Her cheek pressed against his lapel, her eyes softening, the mask slipping ever so slightly. Leanne saw the trust there. The simplicity. For better or worse, Dean loved their daughter.
“Be safe,” Dean said over their daughter’s shoulder before letting go of Nora. “Call me as soon as you arrive at the first hotel. If anything goes wrong, you know what to do. I’ve got a full map in the glove box and a list of approved hotel stops. All organized.”
Leanne nodded. She was quietly grateful Dean had asked his secretary to pull everything together, because she just didn’t have it in her.
In a practiced move that came with nearly two decades of marriage, she reached up and smoothed a hand over Dean’s sharply tailored shoulder.
His ever-present suit jacket was pressed to perfection, buttoned high, collar crisp, tie knotted with surgical precision.
Dean wore his clothes like armor—always had.
What would happen if he loosened his tie? Would the man beneath all that structure unravel?
Then she glanced down at herself—nipped-in waist, pale linen dress, the familiar cool weight of pearls against her collarbone. She was no better. Buttoned-up in her own way. Contained.
Maybe this trip wasn’t just about finding her mother.
Maybe it was about finding herself.
Dean dangled the keys before her, the metal glinting in the early sun. “Remember to go easy on the clutch,” he said. “And if you want to put the top down, take a look at the manual—I highlighted the pages with pictures.”
Leanne nodded. “We probably won’t take the top down,” she replied, shaking her head with a rueful laugh.
The top of the car, she suspected, would stay just as tightly fastened as her belt. As buttoned-up as her marriage.
Nora tapped the roof of the Lincoln with her palm. “Don’t worry, Dad. I fully plan to make Mom drive with the top down all the way through the Midwest. I want to feel that sun on my skin. If I’m going to be trapped in a car, I’m coming back with a tan.”
Leanne laughed—her voice a little too high, a little too forced. She could already feel the arguments waiting to unfold like road maps across the plains. Nora had agreed to go on this trip with her, but Leanne knew what her daughter was giving up—one last summer with her friends.
Maybe Leanne needed to start making concessions now, in gratitude for her daughter’s sacrifice.
“I might be persuaded to let you put it down,” she said, smoothing her skirt with a small smile. “Once or twice.”
Nora raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really? I’ll believe that when I see it.” She climbed into the passenger seat and slammed the door with purpose.
Dean leaned in for a goodbye kiss. Leanne offered him a polite peck—brief, closed-mouth, practiced.
When was the last time they’d kissed like they meant it? Probably sometime around the Eisenhower administration. Or was it Truman? She couldn’t remember. Maybe not since Nora was conceived.
Dean stepped back with a smile that was more habit than heat. “Enjoy the trip. I hear Nora’s packed The Godfather for the road.”
“Yes, I packed a book too,” Leanne said, mildly amused.
“I trust you’re packing something more…refined.”
Leanne turned her back to him, slipping into the driver’s seat. She didn’t bother answering. Let him believe she packed Good Housekeeping if it helped him sleep better at night.
In truth, The Love Machine was buried deep in her purse—bold, dog-eared, and buzzing with a female energy she’d long since personally repressed.
He’d always been dismissive of her reading choices—calling them trash, lowbrow, fantasy nonsense. If Dean had acted even remotely like Jacqueline Susann’s smoldering anti-heroes, maybe she’d give him more than a goodbye peck on the lips.
She adjusted the mirror and started the engine as Nora began flipping through the opening pages of The Godfather, her long legs propped on the dash like she had all the time in the world.
Then Leanne pulled out of the driveway, a quiet, intrepid thrill humming beneath her pearls.