Chapter Ten
A knock at the door startled Eleanor from sleep.
She sat up in bed, disoriented, her breath caught in her chest like a question.
Unmoored, she swiveled her head slowly back and forth.
Didn’t recognize the room—didn’t know where she was, what day it was.
She didn’t even know who she was. Waves of panic washed over her as the pale motel wallpaper swam before her eyes, warped in the dim morning light.
But then, like a camera lens adjusting its focus, her identity and memories came rushing back.
The stage.
The spotlight.
The roar of applause.
Her own voice, rising up like a soul finally unlocked from its vault.
But so too had the gloriousness come with a sense of overwhelming sadness. That was the strange thing about memory lately: It wasn’t chronological anymore. But musical. Emotional. Came back in flashes and tones.
Roxy jumped off the bed with a soft thump. Her tiny feet clicked across the floor as she trotted to the door, claws scratching at the bottom panel just as the knock sounded again.
Eleanor pushed the covers aside, realizing with a faint jolt that she’d fallen asleep in her dress from the day before. The fabric was wrinkled now, the hem twisted around her knees, and the faint scent of sweat and lavender clung to the cloth like perfume and memory.
She padded barefoot across the room and cracked the door open.
A young man in a front-desk uniform stood there, holding up a folded piece of paper.
“Eleanor Bell?” he asked, polite but hesitant.
“Yes?” Eleanor blinked, trying to rid the sleep—and the fog—from her eyes.
“I’ve got a message for you.” He handed her the slip of paper. His eyes lit up suddenly. “Shep Moon.”
The name landed in her ears like a whisper, hinting at something she should remember.
“Shep Moon,” she repeated aloud, but it came out more like a question than a statement.
Something in her stomach fluttered—recognition? Or was it just the lyrical cadence of the name that suggested someone worth knowing?
Shep Moon.
Wasn’t that the musician Nora had mentioned once?
Claimed he played guitar like nobody’s business.
And of all the ridiculous things to say, Nora claimed Shep Moon gave Jimi Hendrix a run for his money.
When she’d asked if Nora had a crush, her granddaughter had scoffed and said he was too old, but from the picture Eleanor saw, he wasn’t old at all.
Probably late thirties or early forties.
But she supposed to any eighteen-year-old, that was elderly.
What in the world would Shep Moon want with her?
Eleanor held out a hand and took the slip of paper, covered with messy, unfamiliar handwriting from the clerk. She murmured her thanks before closing the door and clicking the lock firmly into place.
Leaning back against the wood, letting the solidness hold her up.
She looked down at the note again, her hands trembling.
Shep Moon requests your presence onstage to sing his first number, Rising Tide.
Eleanor’s heart pounded behind her rib cage, her fingers trembled against the paper that she held in her hands. She stared at the words, expecting them to rearrange themselves. A musician wanted her onstage with him. Not as a fluke. Not as a nostalgia act.
As a performer.
Was this real? She wasn’t always sure anymore what was real and what were figments of her imagination.
She pressed a hand to her arm. The skin—soft, papery, the elasticity of youth vanished—warmed slightly under her touch. She didn’t dare pinch herself or risk a bruise, which happened too easily these days. But this wasn’t a dream.
In a dream, she wouldn’t be able to see the delicate blue veins beneath her skin. The fine age spots. The realness of time.
No, dreams didn’t look this lived-in.
She rushed to change her clothes, moving with a giddy urgency she hadn’t felt in decades.
She chose another floaty dress—this one light teal with a daisy pattern—something that felt in fashion for the festival scene.
Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, she started to twist her hair into a bun, then let it drop long and loose around her shoulders again.
Something she never would’ve done back home.
Something a woman of her age wouldn’t ever do in public.
But right now, she didn’t care what a woman her age should or shouldn’t do.
Roxy danced around her feet, tail wagging as Eleanor clipped the leash onto her collar.
“Ready?” Eleanor asked.
The dog barked once, as if to say, Finally.
Eleanor swept out of the motel room, feeling ten years younger. Then stopped short.
She didn’t have a car.
Of course, she didn’t.
She turned back toward the front desk, her sandals tapping against the hot concrete.
She was halfway to asking the sleepy clerk to call her a cab when a young woman in cutoff denim shorts and a gauzy white tank top caught her eye.
Was she the same one who’d stopped her coming offstage the day before?
The girl was leaning against a beat-up silver VW bus with flowers painted on the side and a peace sign hanging from the rearview. She was eating a peach, juice dripping down her wrist. When she saw Eleanor, she broke into a wide, fruit-juicy smile—like she’d been waiting for her all along.
“Eleanor, right?” the girl called out. “You were amazing yesterday.”
Eleanor’s eyes widened, thrown off. “Oh. Thank you.”
“Mr. Moon asked me to come for you,” the girl said, pushing off the bus. “You made such a huge impression yesterday when you were singing during the open mic time, and he thought it would be really fun to open the show with you today.”
Just like that.
No hesitation. No questions about how she had even gotten here.
“Everyone’s talking about you,” the girl continued, dropping the peach pit to the ground and opening the van’s passenger door for Eleanor, before climbing into the driver’s seat.
“Talking about me?” Eleanor laughed, attempting to brush off her embarrassment as she climbed in and put Roxy on her lap.
“You’ve got a lot of talent.” The young woman glanced over at her, turning the key in the ignition, the van’s engine rumbling to life. “Where’ve you been hiding all these years?”
Eleanor smiled softly, eyes out the window. “At home.”
The girl tilted her head, clearly not understanding.
“Home” didn’t mean much to someone like her, Eleanor supposed.
She looked at the young, wild woman, who wore her liberation like women of Eleanor’s generation wore perfume.
She likely lived out of a van, probably hadn’t done a load of laundry in a washing machine in weeks, and used the word “free” like a religion.
To Eleanor, home had meant something very specific.
A husband.
A child.
A calendar filled with things that didn’t include her name.
“Well,” Eleanor said, smoothing her dress as a cue to change the subject. “Let’s get going then.”
She didn’t want to explain it. Not the detour of her life. Not the reasons she’d stopped singing. And certainly not the sharp, terrifying truth that she was on borrowed time. That the memories were already slipping, slow and quiet like tides pulling back before anyone noticed they were gone.
Liberation, she quickly learned, came with a lead foot.
The girl drove like she was in a race no one else had entered. The van screeched through a turn into the festival parking lot, and Roxy let out a yip from Eleanor’s lap, claws scrambling for traction.
“Good heavens,” Eleanor muttered, clutching the seat belt, which didn’t latch. By the time they came to a stop, her knees were shaky, and her hair had gone wind-wild.
She stepped out onto the dusty grass, trying to compose herself. “Thank you for the ride, dear,” she said politely, then added silently, Never again.
“Right this way, Miss Bell,” the girl said with a grin, clearly unfazed.
Eleanor followed her across the field, past a tangle of tents, food trucks, and barefoot festivalgoers dancing.
When they reached a massive canvas tent near the side of the main stage, the girl flung the flap open and gestured grandly. “Welcome backstage.”
Inside, the light shifted—filtered through canvas, golden and dim. The smell hit her first: burned coffee, body odor, and something sweeter, more herbal.
Marijuana.
Men and women lounged on cots or sat—some on ground, others on a collection of mismatched chairs—sipping from enamel mugs and strumming guitars. A girl was braiding another’s hair. A boy with no shirt and too many bracelets was tuning a bass.
Eleanor stepped carefully over a tambourine.
She stood in the middle of the tent, one hand lightly gripping Roxy’s leash, watching the crowd move around her like a tide she wasn’t a part of.
“Eleanor!” The voice came from the back of the tent—a rich, bright tenor that cut through the haze.
A man rose from where he’d been crouched, tuning a guitar. He set his instrument down with reverence and moved toward her.
His shirt was a flowing, ruffled affair, open nearly to his navel, exposing a smooth chest lightly dusted with sandy hair. His jeans clung to him like a second skin. His feet were bare, toes ringed in dust.
He moved like he owned the earth he walked on.
Eleanor was jarred by his presence, his energy. There was something about the chiseled angle of his jaw, the curve of his mouth, those sea-glass eyes—green with a halo of blue, etched with just a hint of age lines.
He wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. She remembered seeing him in a magazine. A copy of Rolling Stone that Nora had held out for her—with a full spread of this very man, Shep Moon, dubbed the Great Guitar God.
He stopped in front of her, all easy energy and effortless edge.
Silver rings glittered on nearly every finger. Beaded and leather bracelets stacked up his wrists. He reached up, sweeping back a mess of sun-kissed curls, then removed his floppy felt hat before offering her a theatrical bow.
“You are even more radiant up close than onstage,” he said with a grin that could melt a vinyl record.
Eleanor felt a jolt of something. Not just attraction—though, God help her, that too—but recognition. Of joy. Of being young and chosen. Of being seen.
Stretched out in front of her was his offered hand, and she took it. His palm was warm, rough with the callouses of someone who lived in music.
Time slid crabwise, along with her fingers curling into his. She was no longer in a festival tent in California. She was somewhere else—someone else. Holding the hand of a boy she had once promised everything to.
Someone she’d lost.
“Are you ready to sing with me, Ellie?” he asked.
The nickname hit her like a bell rung from deep inside her chest.
Ellie.
No one had called her that in decades.
Her lips parted, but no words came. Just that odd, heart-shifting ache.
Because she had heard that voice before.
Because someone else had once said her name just like that.
And because, for the first time in a long time, she wasn’t entirely sure if this moment was new—or a memory so real it seemed new.
“I’ve been waiting to,” Eleanor said, her voice suddenly steadied by soul-enriching memories.
Shep didn’t seem thrown off by her answer. He gave her an easy smile and said, “Well, today’s the day.” He gave her hand a playful squeeze before letting go. “Now, let’s get practicing so we can go out there and blow this joint straight to the sky.”
He turned, his bare feet moving confidently across the carpeted tent floor. With one hand, he plucked his guitar off its stand and, with the other, gestured for her to follow.
Eleanor drew in a steadying breath. The same type of relaxing breathing she’d told her daughter to do when she panicked over a test score.
Only this wasn’t school, and the score certainly mattered.
Her pulse galloped, her fingers tingled.
But it wasn’t just nerves. It was a feeling of pure aliveness.
The back of the tent had been sectioned off with colored scarves tacked to the canvas, giving the illusion of a separate space.
It wasn’t much—just a folding chair, a milk crate, and a few instrument cases stacked like suitcases in a forgotten train station.
But Eleanor saw it for what it really was—a portal.
To before.
To possibility.
To a version of herself she hadn’t been or even seen in decades.
Shep plopped onto the milk crate and began to strum, humming softly under his breath as he tuned. Then he looked up, his expression gentle. “You good with harmony? Or do you want to lead?”
Eleanor’s head jerked, taken aback. “You want me to lead?”
“I asked you to sing with me, didn’t I?” he said, eyebrows lifting. “What kind of fraud would I be if I put you onstage and didn’t let you shine?”
She laughed, floored by the sheer absurdity of it, and yet…not absurd at all.
Because somewhere in her bones, she remembered not just music but the feeling of being chosen.
“I can lead,” she replied softly, wishing she had the gumption to ask Why me? but afraid doing so would break whatever spell was at work here.
“That’s what I’m talking about.” Shep leaned forward, passing her a small lyric sheet, handwritten and smudged with coffee rings. “‘Rising Tide’ is a duet I wrote last winter about forgetting and remembering. Figured it might suit us after hearing your song yesterday.”
The first line of the song swam before her eyes: Now’s not the time for forgetting. Now’s the time for love.
Eleanor’s chest swelled, tightening with emotion, with reverence and hope.
There was truth in the line. She’d lived it once.