Chapter Thirty
There was definitely something wrong with her mother.
Nora studied Leanne from the passenger seat, stealing glances at her mom, who gripped the steering wheel of the Lincoln like it might suddenly buck her off. The skin of her face was suddenly tight, too quiet, her lips pulled into a brittle smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
There were plenty of times her mom had been quiet back home.
The queen of doing dishes in silence, folding laundry with a pinched mouth, offering the occasional “mm-hmm” to fill the air.
But this trip had been different. Leanne had been talking more.
Laughing. Opening up in ways Nora had never expected.
And Nora had started to love that part of the drive—the winding roads and the stories that came with them.
But now? Now, it felt like someone had shut the radio off mid-song.
“Mom?” Nora asked gently. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
Leanne blinked as if she’d just been pulled out of a dream—or a nightmare. She turned her head, smiled the kind of smile parents reserve for “everything’s fine” lies, and nodded once.
“I’m good,” she said too brightly. “Shall we look for her?”
Eleanor.
After her grandmother’s haunting performance onstage—the one that had stopped time, cracked hearts wide open, and left the crowd singing like they’d brushed something magical—she’d vanished. Again. Like a magician in full purple-and-yellow fashion disappearing into a magic hat.
One moment, Eleanor had been shoulder to shoulder with Shep Moon, strumming like her fingers were dipped in lightning, and the next—poof. Gone. No last-minute words. No goodbye. No encore. She’d even ditched her interview with Joe, which Nora had been hoping to sneak in on.
They’d scoured the grounds, but the tent where the band had been camped was already packed up, the area nothing more than trampled grass and discarded cigarette butts. Not even the Beatles’ look-alikes who’d been standing guard were left.
The few people still lingering offered only vague shrugs and a lot of “Maybe she left with Shep?” speculation.
Nora exhaled hard, pressing her forehead to the cool window as Leanne started the engine. The Lincoln rumbled to life, its radio fizzing to static before settling on an Elvis track.
“I wish Joe were with us,” she muttered.
“Me too,” her mother said softly.
He had a way of knowing things by asking the right questions. Nora had never met anyone like him—charming, intelligent, and interested in her world views.
But, with a serious glint in his eye, like the story was alive and writhing in his notebook, and he had to pin it down before it slipped away, Joe had taken off after the show, saying something about following a tip.
Typical journalist. Always chasing, always hunting the next thread.
Nora just hoped that thread led to Eleanor.
Or, at the very least, back to her.
Nora said she understood. Sort of. She was a writer too, at least in theory.
The mudlarking scene would make it into her leather journal beside the other lines she’d scribbled in ink so smudged they looked like they were sweating.
She knew what it meant to need quiet to think.
To feel like your best ideas only visited when you were alone.
What she needed to remember was that however much she liked Joe, he was just a summer crush. Still…Joe would’ve made excellent company.
He knew all the bands. All the roadie gossip. All the fast ways to track down the next show. And right now, she and her mom were just driving around Atlanta like detectives in a B-rated noir film, stopping at every roadside motel with a VW van in the parking lot, hoping for a lucky break.
For the record, they were not getting lucky.
“Let’s try this one.” Leanne pulled the Lincoln Continental into the lot of a diner-motel hybrid. A dusty, sun-bleached place with flickering neon that spelled HOTEL—the E hanging on for dear life.
She parked next to a blue VW bus that looked promising. Stickers with peace signs and guitars were plastered across the back window. Nora spotted a pair of fuzzy neon blue dice dangling from the rearview mirror.
They got out, stretching from the long ride, and Nora watched her mom peer through the van’s window.
Leanne sighed. “I’m not a very good investigator,” she said, shielding her eyes from the glare. “I don’t know why I thought I could travel across the country and find my mother. Like one pile of blankets or rucksacks will scream Eleanor Bell.”
Nora reached out, resting a hand on her mom’s elbow.
“But, Mom, you did find her. Multiple times. You found her in California. You found her in Denver. We literally watched her sing onstage here in Atlanta. You did the thing.”
“Yes. And then she ran off again,” Leanne muttered, wiping her hands against her borrowed jeans. “And I know she saw me. It’s like she ran off on purpose.”
“Yeah, but we know where she’s going and that she’s safe,” Nora said, her voice gentle, anchoring them both. “Seattle’s next. Then Woodstock. She’s got a plan. And we’re following it.”
Nora, unexpectedly, felt like the grown-up.
Like the one doling out Band-Aids and pep talks.
The way her mom used to do when Nora had tripped on the sidewalk and skinned both knees.
Or the time in the fifth grade when little Benny Simmons had pulled her journal from her backpack and read it out loud on the school bus—the journal with the hearts doodled around Sammy Morales’s name.
Her mom had marched down to the school and given the principal such a firm yet polite earful that Benny never made eye contact with Nora again.
“You’re strong,” her mom had told her back then. “You write what you feel. And don’t let anyone shame you for it.”
And now, Nora found herself returning that strength.
“We’re going to find her again,” she said softly. “Everything’s going to be okay. Grandma is probably after that last-hurrah sort of thing.”
Leanne turned, and the worry lines softened around her eyes for just a beat.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” her mom said, her voice low, almost hoarse.
“I’m here for the long haul, or at least until the fall semester,” Nora said. “Now, let’s go see if this place serves fries or just good vibrations.”
Leanne paused mid-step in the parking lot, staring at her daughter. The wind whipped through Nora’s hair, strands dancing across her face, blinding her from her mother’s musing mien.
“What?” She swiped at the flyaways.
“Just admiring you.” Leanne tucked Nora’s hair behind her ear. “Admiring the woman you’ve become.”
“Wild, willful, and wayward?” Nora infused her tone with a bit of sarcasm.
“I was thinking more wild-hearted, hopeful, and unfiltered, which isn’t bad.”
Nora grinned and leaned into her mother for a hug. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You’re my height now.” Leanne’s voice held a strange note of awe. “Let’s get some fries. Or pie?”
Nora tilted her head, a contemplative look on her face. She’d been the same height for a few years now. “I like pie.”
The diner was nicer inside than outside—checkerboard floor, red vinyl booths, and a jukebox that crackled with Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party.” The scent of sugary desserts and fresh coffee clung to the air like a second skin.
They took seats at the counter, perched on stools that squeaked under their weight, and ordered two slices of blueberry pie and two coffees.
Nora emptied a cascade of sugar into her cup, then a glug of cream—trying coffee again, this time Joe-style. Her mother, ever the stoic, sipped hers black. She watched Nora doctor her coffee like it was a science experiment.
“I’m just trying to induce a diabetic coma.” Nora smirked, adding another spoonful.
Leanne lifted a brow but said nothing.
“Oh, come on, Mom. Give me the speech. ‘You’re going to rot your teeth out of your head.’”
Leanne laughed and wrinkled her nose. “Is that really how I sound?”
Nora laughed and finally relented, setting the spoon down before the cup turned into liquid candy.
They sipped in comfortable silence for a beat, the sound of pie forks and low conversation filling the background like an old friend humming nearby.
“Well,” Leanne finally said, breaking the stillness, “that was a heck of a thing, wasn’t it?”
Nora snorted into her overly sweetened coffee. “If someone had told me this was how I’d spend my summer—following Grandma across the country as she played rock festivals—I would’ve laughed. Or cried. Or called the cops.”
“I would’ve thought they were intoxicated,” Leanne replied, shaking her head. “And there’s been plenty of things floating around these crowds to justify that theory.”
“Maybe that’s it.” Nora pushed her coffee aside, deciding she’d rather not fall into a coma. “Maybe we ate some funky hot dogs.”
“Or sipped on psychedelic soda.” Leanne took another bite of pie, lips twitching with amusement.
“Honestly, I think the brownies are safer.”
They both chuckled, partly in relief and also in disbelief. This week, the whole world had shifted beneath their feet. The only way to survive was to find the humor. And at least they weren’t alone in the journey. The whole world seemed to be following the Dame of Rock and Roll.
Nora leaned back on her stool, her fork chasing a stray blueberry.
“I’ve never seen you like this,” Nora hedged softly.
“Like what?” Her mother licked blueberry juice from her fork.
Nora bit her lip, unsure how much she should say, but then went for it. “Alive.”
Leanne tilted her head, eyes on Nora, and her expression made Nora want to pull back the single word like saying it out loud had caused something deep in her mother’s chest to crack open.
“Well,” she said, “maybe that’s what happens when you chase someone who’s lost. Sometimes, you end up finding yourself too.”
They each took another bite of pie in sync, letting the hum of diner life fill in the blanks between sentences.
Forks scraped ceramic plates, a waitress refilled someone’s mug, and the radio behind the counter hissed out the twangy and sweet voice of Loretta Lynn.
The sounds and smells brought to mind every roadside diner between here and California.
Around them, conversations pinged from sports scores to weekend fishing trips to someone’s cousin who just returned from army basic training and was gearing up to be shipped to Vietnam. But then, a nearby voice caught Nora’s ear.
“…this old woman just walked out onstage with Shep Moon. Blew the damn roof off if there’d been one.”
Nora turned her head slightly, eyes flicking to the booth behind them where a young couple leaned in over a shared milkshake, buzzing with postconcert adrenaline.
“She shredded that guitar. And that voice? Like Janis and Joan Baez had a baby and raised her on cigarettes and whiskey.”
Nora snorted softly into her mug and leaned toward her mom. “Looks like Grandma’s got some fans.”
Leanne shook her head slowly, awe painted plainly across her face. “I just don’t get it. If she could sing like that…why did she wait so long?”
Nora lifted her shoulder in a half shrug. “Obligation?”
Leanne drew in a long breath at the word as if it had taken the wind out of her.
She nodded, then got that far-off look again—the one she wore when she was reliving something no one else could see. Then she met Nora’s gaze with unusual clarity. “Do you really want to go into marketing like your father?”
“What?” Nora hurried to take a bite of the pie so she didn’t have to answer immediately.
“I know you feel like that’s the right path,” Leanne said gently, “but I want you to choose a path that makes you happy. Not one you think others will approve of.”
Nora slowly chewed the blueberry on her fork, letting the fruit burst on her tongue. The syrupy sweetness was suddenly too much—too rich, too real.
She stared down at her plate, then back at her mother.
The woman who had spent the last few weeks evolving before her very eyes.
The woman who had once walked through life like she was treading on eggshells.
The woman who was now wearing Nora’s jeans and eating diner pie with a new kind of steadiness in her voice.
A swell of emotion rose in Nora’s chest, not just from the question but from the weight of the answer she wasn’t sure she should say aloud.
“I don’t know,” she finally said, her voice quiet.
“Marketing sounds practical, and I get why it makes sense to everyone else. But…I’ve been carrying around this journal, and every time I write in it, I feel more like myself than I ever do when I’m talking about ad campaigns or consumer psychology. ”
Leanne’s eyes didn’t widen in surprise. Instead, they softened with understanding. “Then maybe that’s worth listening to. That journal—writing—has meant a lot to you.”
The jukebox clicked over to a new track—Otis Redding this time “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay”—and mother and daughter just sat there, letting the song fill the silence like the diner counter was the bay and their stools the dock.
Outside, the sun was setting low over the parking lot, glinting off the windshield of the Lincoln.
And for once, Nora didn’t feel the pressure to rush toward what was expected. Maybe the road ahead wasn’t paved, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t hers.
And now, that path felt bendable for the first time—like a fork in the road she’d been ignoring, with one path leading straight and the other looking more like an adventure.
She could still make the turn. Still choose the trail that felt like her, the one that was wild-hearted, hopeful, and unfiltered.
There were classes at Yale she hadn’t even considered letting herself look at.
Ones that whispered of fiction and poetry, of voices and stories waiting to be found.
She swallowed the last bite of pie, the sweet tang clinging to her tongue like a promise. As she cleared her throat, her voice was steady as she finally admitted, “I want to be a writer.”