Chapter Seven
The hot, dry California sun beat down on Eleanor’s shoulders, baking the dust into her skin and warming the crown of her scalp through her wide-brimmed straw hat.
She’d chosen a sundress that morning—white cotton, patterned with faded yellow flowers.
She wanted to fit in a little more with the crowd.
They meandered the dirt path, Roxy trotting on a thin leash at her side, her petite, hairless but fabulous body full of spunky energy.
Eleanor’s guitar was slung over her shoulder, strap pressing into her collarbone with a familiar weight—like an old friend leaning against her after too many years apart.
A thrill traveled through her limbs as she stepped on the free stage erected for impromptu jams. Her fingers itched.
Her chest lifted. Decades had passed since she’d been in front of a crowd, felt the rush of anticipation ripple across her skin like an applause.
The nerves she’d thought would freeze her throat didn’t show up, thank goodness.
Like old times, Eleanor. You’re the Bell of Wartime Music.
The audience wasn’t an audience yet—just clusters of young people sprawled across the grass, their feet bare, denim bell-bottoms grass-stained, cigarette smoke curling above their heads like question marks. They laughed with the loose easiness of the young and unburdened.
Eleanor wished, for a beat, that she could have laughed like that in her twenties—after she’d given up on her dreams. That she hadn’t spent so much time stitching herself into the tight hemline of duty. That she’d let her soul sing rather than bottling it up.
But she’d tried, hadn’t she? Her husband had always known music was in her—had even encouraged it initially. But over the years, his encouragement turned into tolerance, and then expectation took over. Housework. Dinner. Shopping. Childcare. Manners.
Here, though, no one knew her name.
Just an old lady with a guitar and Roxy and no responsibilities except for keeping herself and her dog fed and in the shade.
Her flight had landed late the night before.
By the time she’d taken a cab to the motel and collapsed onto the bed, she was too tired to do anything but sleep.
Despite the time difference from New York to California, she still woke up long past her usual hour, but she didn’t feel guilty about it as she usually did at home.
She felt…rested. Recharged. Even the motel’s stale continental breakfast—lukewarm coffee, a blueberry muffin, and a hard-boiled egg—had tasted better than any breakfast she remembered having for a while.
Someone on the plane mentioned the open mic sign-up happening on the festival grounds that morning.
More than one person had to give her directions as she kept getting lost, but she eventually she found the right tent. The woman at the sign-up table hadn’t even blinked at her age.
That, in itself, was its own kind of grace.
And now here she was, stepping out onstage. It wasn’t a prime-time slot. Just a chance to perform for the early birds staking out their patch of grass before the three dazed days of “real” concerts began.
Eleanor stepped up to the microphone, her fingers grazing the cool metal, the weight of it familiar and foreign all at once, like being in the spotlight—with both the excitement and the dread that accompanied performing for a crowd.
“How’s everybody doing this morning?” she asked, her voice slightly higher than she intended.
A few halfhearted responses floated up from the lawn, but most of the crowd was still busy with their granola bowls, apples, or morning cigarettes. The scent of clove smoke and suntan lotion drifted through the air, blending with the faint sweetness of patchouli.
Eleanor bit her lip, wondering if she could go through with this. Almost fifty years had gone by since she’d stood on a stage. Singing in the living room at Christmas or humming to herself while folding laundry wasn’t the same.
She considered walking off. Just stepping back down and pretending she’d come up by mistake. What was she doing here, anyway? At her age?
Leanne would have a heart attack if she saw her here. Eleanor swallowed, wondering if she’d made a mistake. Maybe some dreams weren’t worth reliving.
She glanced out over the crowd. A patchwork of brightly colored nylon sleeping bags, cross-legged youths, and transistor radios scattered like seashells on the grass.
The sun rose behind them, casting the scene in a warm, golden haze.
A slight breeze lifted the hem of her sundress and danced across the chords beneath her fingers.
This was the moment. Her moment. If she couldn’t do it now—here, in California, guitar in hand and no one to answer to—then she never would. And she might as well go home.
“Sing!” someone shouted, laughing. A few others joined in with chuckles and spunky encouragement.
Roxy gave a sharp little bark at her ankle and nudged Eleanor’s leg with her wet nose. That tiny nudge was enough.
Eleanor inhaled. Exhaled. Let her fingers settle on the strings.
She strummed a few soft chords, testing the resonance, the rhythm. Then she began to sing the song she’d written on the plane—scribbled onto a cocktail napkin. A song about endings and beginnings. About loss and reinvention. About loving fiercely and letting go gently.
At first, the crowd barely noticed. Then something shifted. As she finished the first verse, conversations faded out of the background noise. Heads turned. A couple in the third row began to sway in time with the melody. A young man with a joint in hand closed his eyes.
So Eleanor kept going.
Her voice grew stronger. Her foot tapped the worn wood of the stage. Her spine straightened and she leaned into the microphone, her breath catching fire on the lyrics. The sound came from somewhere deep—bone-deep, soul-deep. Not just singing anymore.
This was remembering.
Her fingers danced over the strings like they were part of her—an extension of memory, longing, and youth that lingered in the recesses of her tangled brain. The energy from the crowd buzzed in her skin. Filled her. Lifted her. Made her feel timeless.
Suddenly, she wasn’t Henry’s widow. Wasn’t Leanne’s mother. She wasn’t sixty-nine, with wrinkles etched around her eyes and mouth. Her memories weren’t fading.
She was Eleanor Bell. A woman with a voice and a Gibson L-00.
The crowd erupted as she strummed the final chords, the last note hanging like a secret in the warm morning air.
First came the applause. Then cheering. Then, a smattering of people rose to their feet.
And then—unexpectedly—calls for an encore.
Eleanor’s breath caught, stunned. The half dozen performers who’d gone on before her had received scattered polite claps and a few nods. But this—this was different.
The skeptical side of her wondered if they were just humoring her. An old lady with a guitar.
But when she scanned the faces in front of the stage—sun-kissed, wide-eyed, grinning—she didn’t see pity. She saw interest. Joy.
She leaned into the mic, breathless but smiling. “Another?”
“Encore! Encore! Encore!” Listeners chanted back in unison, clapping in time.
Eleanor grinned.
The first song had been written in a rush of urgency—scribbled across the sky between New York and California. But the next song… The next one was different.
Old. Older than some of the kids standing looking up at her on the stage.
She hadn’t played it in nearly fifty years.
A song from a time when she still believed her whole life was stretched out like a ribbon of possibility.
A song she had written for someone she’d loved.
Briefly. Fiercely. Someone lost to her. The man who had once handed her a note with only three words: Until next time. But they never had a next time.
She stepped closer to the mic, adjusting her grip on the guitar.
“I wrote this song a long time ago,” she said, her voice warm and steady. “For a man.”
The crowd laughed with her, easy and open.
“But also,” she added, “for me.”
Cheers rang out, more sincere than before. And then, she began to play.
The opening chords came slower this time—gentler. Her voice entered low and soft, growing with each verse. There was something raw about the performance. Not polished. Not perfect. But true. Because she was singing from a place so deep it didn’t have a name.
By the time the final chorus came, her voice was trembling with emotion—years of love and loss threading through the melody. Tears slipped down her cheeks, but she didn’t stop. Not this time.
When the last note faded, she stepped away from the mic. The silence held for a beat longer than expected before the crowd exploded into cheers again. Someone tossed a flower toward the stage.
She gave a slight curtsy—half embarrassed, half triumphant.
They shouted for another encore. But this time, Eleanor simply smiled and walked off, the flower tucked behind her ear, the guitar still humming softly in her hands, Roxy beside her with a little bounce in her step.
She was emotionally drained.
But also—alive.
“That was amazing. Oh my gosh—I can’t believe you’re not already on the lineup for this festival.”
The words hit Eleanor like a warm breeze—unexpected and entirely welcome.
She turned. The woman speaking was young, maybe mid-twenties, with freckled cheeks and a clipboard tucked under one arm.
A red bandanna was tied around her head in that effortless way only girls born after World War II seemed able to master.
She scribbled something on the form in her hand, glancing up.
“What’s your name? Where can we reach you?”
The question surprised her, and her gaze unfocused for half a breath. No one had asked her that in decades—not like this. Not as someone to book, someone to want.
“My name is Eleanor…Bell.” She wasn’t entirely certain why she left off her married name, Strickland. Only that she wanted to be the Bell of Wartime Music again. “I’m staying for the whole festival,” she said, adjusting her guitar strap on her shoulder. “I’m at the Pink Flamingo. Room seven.”
The woman nodded, jotting it down.
With a sudden burst of confidence, Eleanor added. “I’ll be on the lawn listening to music. If you need me just say my name into the mic and I’ll come running.”
The girl glanced up from her clipboard, meeting Eleanor’s gaze with a self-assured smile. “I just might.”
Roxy gave a high-pitched bark, her little legs prancing in place.
Eleanor glanced down. “What do you say we get something to eat, hmm?”
Roxy’s ears perked, and she let out another bark, clearly in agreement.
Truthfully, Eleanor wasn’t hungry. Not really. What she needed wasn’t food so much as a moment. A moment to step away from the stage, from the adrenaline still buzzing under her skin, and to…digest.
Because something had shifted.
Eleanor had stepped onstage as a memory, but she’d stepped off it as a musician.