Chapter Six
Nora watched her mother’s tight and awkward hands on the steering wheel—as if she’d never driven a car before.
She wanted to ask what she was worried about, but she bit her tongue.
The answer was obvious. While Nora believed her grandmother had gone off on a grand adventure, her mother believed Eleanor had likely been abducted or worse.
Besides, they were only fifteen minutes into at least a three-day road trip to California, not to mention the ride back.
The last thing Nora wanted was to spend the entire drive locked in silent warfare over something dumb.
Reaching forward, she switched on the radio.
The dial buzzed and clicked, then settled into the warm hum of rock and roll—Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit”—pouring from the speakers in scratchy stereo.
Nora braced for a groan, a sigh, a predictably passive-aggressive comment about “noise” or “those drugged-up musicians.”
But none came.
In fact, looking over at her mom out of the corner of her eye, Nora would almost swear she saw her mother’s lips twitch upward.
They were chasing Eleanor just like Alice was chasing the white rabbit, like the song lyrics…
The truth was, Nora had been kind of pissed about this whole thing.
Her mom dropping everything to chase Eleanor across the country felt…
dramatic. And, of course, Nora couldn’t say no.
That would’ve made her the selfish one. The ungrateful daughter.
The one who let her possibly senile grandmother vanish into the California sunset with nothing but a playlist and a dream.
Kelley had been as disappointed to hear Nora tell her she wasn’t going to the lake this weekend as Nora had been to tell it. The only consolation was that she was going to a music festival, maybe more than one, and Kelley wanted a picture of Nora near the stage.
Watching their neighborhood slip past the windows—sprinklers hissing, boys on bikes weaving between driveways—something shifted.
Nora had never admitted it out loud, but the idea of seeing Janis Joplin or Joe Cocker in person made her stomach flip.
She’d read about them in Rolling Stone and studied their photos like they were gods.
And now she was heading west, toward the sound.
She tapped her fingers along the dashboard in rhythm with the song, her voice soft at first, then growing louder with the chorus. Her mother said nothing—but the nascent smile on her lips grew.
Maybe this wouldn’t be completely terrible.
Or maybe it would. By the fourth song, Nora felt the familiar itch of restlessness.
She picked her copy of The Godfather back off her lap where she’d laid it, running her fingers over the black cover and gold lettering.
She was still shocked that her mom had agreed to let her read it aloud on the road. It wasn’t exactly Little Women.
She’d first picked it up last year in English class during their “choose-your-own-book” unit—a rare rebellion from the usual syllabus of dead British men. Her teacher hadn’t exactly been thrilled.
He had likely expected Austen. Maybe Woolf. Possibly something “respectable,” like To Kill a Mockingbird or A Room of One’s Own.
Instead, Nora had slapped down a Mafia saga full of blood, sex, betrayal, and men who made decisions with their fists. It was dark. Violent. Raunchy. And absolutely intoxicating.
The teacher, Mr. Boone, had raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure, Nora?”
She’d nodded without flinching. “Positive.”
Because what she loved wasn’t just the crime or the swagger—it was the storytelling. The pulse of it. The way the book moved—no frilly subtext, no polite metaphors. Just pure power in every sentence. The Godfather was the first book that made her feel like storytelling could be dangerous.
And she’d started a trend.
By the next day, two other students had walked in with their own dog-eared copies, Mafia-style grins as they slid the paperbacks onto their desks like contraband.
Mr. Boone had bristled, clearly rattled by the sudden literary mutiny, and Nora was sure he’d scrap the whole assignment, and reimpose top-down order.
But in the end, he’d let it stand.
Now, curled into the passenger seat of an outlandish red Lincoln Continental rumbling west on the highway, she cracked open the book to page one and prepared to narrate the story aloud.
She just hoped she wouldn’t get carsick. Reading in the car had never bothered her when her dad was driving. But her mother’s style behind the wheel was…different. As if on cue, her mother changed lanes in a not so smooth fashion.
“Ready for me to start?” Nora asked, looking over at her mom and wondering for a second whether there was more to the woman behind the wheel than tight waistbands and Jell-O molds, and coming to the conclusion there wasn’t.
Leanne glanced over with a glint in her eyes that Nora hardly recognized.
It hit her with a weird sort of nostalgia, like a half-remembered winter evening.
Snow piled high outside, cocoa cooling beside the fire, and her mother reading aloud from a library book while she curled under a blanket.
Before things got more complicated. Before everyone got so tired.
“I am ready.” Leanne’s voice was mischievous but at the same time almost conspiratorial. “But first, I want you to see what I brought.” She nodded toward her purse, nestled between them on the bench seat.
Nora raised an eyebrow and reached over, flipping open the clasp.
Nestled among tissues, a compact mirror, a tube of lipstick, and a roll of Certs peppermints, was a hardback with a cracked spine. Drawing it out, Nora inspected the cover like it might singe her fingers. Holy crap.
There was a close-up photograph of a man’s hand clasping a woman’s, the image tight and intimate. Something about how his fingers curled around hers—possessive, urgent—made Nora’s face go hot.
There was no mistaking the intent.
It wasn’t just a handhold.
It was sex.
Angsty, glossy, unapologetic sex.
Her eyes drifted to the ring on the man’s finger—bold, gold, and centered with a strange symbol she recognized immediately from her world history unit: the ankh, the ancient Egyptian sign for life. Eternal life. Fertility. Vitality.
On the cover model’s hand, though, it didn’t feel sacred.
It felt carnal.
Like a promise.
At the top of the cover, Jacqueline Susann was stamped in bold, black, uppercase letters—like the author was daring you to judge her. Just below the photograph, in a sultry serif font, sat the title: The Love Machine.
Nora swallowed. For a book her mom had casually thrown into a road trip bag, this thing was…loaded. And she thought she was being rebellious with The Godfather.
“Mom, you’re kidding.” Her voice carried the packed, dramatic weight of a teenage girl who had just discovered she was trapped in a car with her mother—and her mother’s racy romance novel.
Nora looked across at her mother as though she’d just confessed to smuggling something indecent across state lines.
Leanne laughed, the same full, unbothered laugh that used to echo through the kitchen when she was baking or dancing to Dusty Springfield on the radio. “Don’t knock it till you try it, hon. I promise—we’ll get through The Godfather first, but that one’s next.”
Nora groaned, flopping back in her seat like a martyr.
Except…
She wasn’t entirely uncurious.
Because truthfully?
She had seen the book before—on her mother’s nightstand more than once, the cover half hidden under Good Housekeeping.
She’d even flipped through it once while her parents were at a dinner party—going just enough to hit a page that made her cheeks burn and her pulse race.
The idea of reading it in front of her father was mortifying.
But here, with just her mother and a long stretch of highway?
If her mother was game, she’d play along.
After all, what eighteen-year-old girl headed off to college wasn’t curious about something called The Love Machine?
She smirked. “Fine. But I’m doing voices.”
“I’d expect nothing less,” Leanne replied, almost serious. “But first—the Mafia.”
Nora opened the book to read, smoothing down the pages with her palm.
“A quote from Balzac: ‘Behind every great fortune there is a crime.’” She paused, glancing out toward the cars that sped past them. “Do you think that’s true, about fortune and crime?”
This was something she’d wanted to ask in class but had been afraid her teacher would think it was a silly, immature question.
“No.” Leanne gave a subtle shake of her head. “Some people earn their fortunes honestly.”
“But are those fortunes considered great?”
Leanne shrugged. “Depends on your definition of great.”
“My teacher said the inclusion of the quote was a critique of capitalism.”
“Hmm.” Leanne adjusted her grip on the steering wheel. “I can see that. Maybe Balzac meant that enormous wealth—the kind that builds empires—usually steps on someone along the way.”
“He was French,” Nora added, half grinning. “And they did have that whole revolution thing.”
Leanne laughed. “True. But he might also have meant that success where no account is offered of how it was earned can conveniently hide a crime. Depends on the translation, I guess.”
Nora tilted her head, a little surprised. “That’s…actually a good point.”
Leanne shrugged, giving a half smile. “Actually? But thanks. And since we’re diving into a Mafia novel, let’s just say for the purposes of examining the quote in context, that we’re talking high-stakes crime.”
Nora grinned. Her mom actually seemed excited about the book. Maybe even…interested.
“All right, Mrs. Miller,” Nora said with mock formality. “Let’s do this.”
Leanne glanced sidelong in her direction. “All right, Miss Miller. Proceed.”
Nora cleared her throat, sitting up straighter. “‘Amerigo Bonasera sat in New York Criminal Court Number 3 and waited for justice; vengeance on the men who had so cruelly hurt his daughter, who had tried to dishonor her.’”
The words spilled from her lips effortlessly—she’d read this page so many times it had practically imprinted on her brain.
She didn’t say it out loud, but every time she read that line, she wondered what it would feel like to have a father who wanted vengeance for her. Who burned with fury at the thought of her being harmed. Who couldn’t stand the idea of someone touching her without love.
She knew her father loved her. That wasn’t the issue.
The issue was…sometimes she wondered if she existed to him when she was out of sight.
And worse—if her mother did either.