Chapter Thirty-Eight
There was just over two weeks between the Seattle Pop Festival and Woodstock.
The idea of returning to Ossining, New York, and then immediately hitting the road again for Woodstock had not, in any universe, appealed to Leanne.
In fact, it was the exact kind of unpredictability she usually worked her entire life to avoid.
But the alternative—facing Dean, unpacking reality—was somehow worse.
So, instead, she and Nora took the scenic route.
They wound through Montana, staying at a little log cabin inn that boasted hot springs and elk sightings.
Nora nearly cried from laughter on a hike when one of the elk chased a tourist who got too close.
They spent an afternoon horseback riding in Glacier National Park, their legs sore for days, and even tried their hand at panning for gold in a touristy little mining town.
Nora declared they were both too glamorous for frontier life.
Leanne declared she’d take aching frontier muscles any day of the week over awkward dinner parties for people she didn’t particularly care for.
They stopped in South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore, where Nora remarked that the presidents looked judgmental.
In Nebraska, they ate the highly recommended sour cream and raisin pie, which Leanne loved and Nora said she’d be fine never having again.
In Kansas, they rode the Ferris wheel at a county fair and munched on candy apples.
And with The Stud finished, they sang Janis Joplin at the top of their lungs as they crossed into Pennsylvania.
The last two weeks, actually the entire summer, was the kind of liberation Leanne didn’t realize she’d been starved of. And the bond between her and her daughter had strengthened to what she hoped amounted to unbreakable.
When they pulled into the farmland outside Bethel for the Woodstock concert, she could hardly believe her eyes.
A tidal wave of people spread across the hills like a multicolored quilt.
Barefoot bodies, shirts in vibrant swirls of colors and shapes, tents pitched like little mushroom caps.
The smells got her the most. At every concert, they’d experienced the cornucopia of scents—herbal patchouli, hoppy beer, and damp earth—but in the last two weeks, she’d forgotten what that smelled like.
Now, the odors filled her nose in sharp reminder, and her stomach twisted with a mix of wonder and mild panic.
And the sheer size of the crowd… In all the concerts combined, she wasn’t sure there had been this many people.
She couldn’t help but think back to Denver. The blur of motion, the weight of bodies pressing her down, tear gas stinging her eyes, the way her heart had thundered in her chest as she lay in the mud gasping for breath. Nora had been terrified. And so had she.
Also, being back in New York meant there was no more “we’ll figure it out when we get home” regarding her unavoidable conversation with Dean.
Because here they were. Technically, home.
And Dean was only a ninety-minute drive away.
There was also the inevitable discussion she’d need to have with her mom.
The thought made her stomach churn.
She’d been putting off “the talk,” the confrontation with Dean, the point where she’d ask for change or, worse, ask if there was still anything left to ask for. And with three more days of festival ahead, she was more than happy to keep kicking that can down the road until after nightfall.
Her mother hadn’t said a word to her, not directly anyway. But Leanne had seen her.
Seen her up on that stage, smiling. Glowing. Alive in a way she hadn’t been in years—maybe ever. A silver-haired woman with her guitar slung low and a voice that wrapped around the crowd like a comforting hand-knit sweater, every thread a memory.
And Leanne, standing at the edge of it all, could only think: She’s doing fine without me.
And that was the part that hurt most of all.
She could listen to the interviews. She could read the newspaper blurbs and magazine features and see the black-and-white photos of her mother grinning under stage lights.
Mama Lightning: The Dame of Rock and Roll.
Eleanor looked happy. Radiant, even. Was it possible that her doctor had gotten the diagnosis wrong? Was that too much to hope for?
But then Leanne remembered her mother’s home.
The strange little notes, the disarray. The episodes of forgetting.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something under the surface.
A shadow behind her mother’s smile. Maybe it was just her imagination.
Or perhaps it was a knowing that only a daughter could feel in her bones.
Because when the truth finally came for her mother, when the lights dimmed and she stropped strumming her guitar, Leanne feared it would be too late to navigate the new normal. And she was terrified that no one—especially not her—would be ready.
She sighed, adjusting the loose linen top she’d picked up at a roadside artisan shop in Montana.
The embroidery still smelled faintly of cedar.
Her cutoff shorts with frayed edges were Nora’s, and her sandals, worn smooth by the rocky trails in the Badlands, wrapped around her ankles in crisscrossed leather fringe.
She looked nothing like the woman she’d been two months ago. Not even close.
Dean wouldn’t recognize her—not just the outfit but the woman inside it.
No pearls. No lipstick. Her skin was tanned and freckled, her hair down, lightened from days outside.
She even moved differently, as if the music played softly in the back of her mind, giving her an added sway.
She hadn’t worn makeup in weeks. Hadn’t missed it either.
In fact, she felt almost like she was glowing with youth.
Nora had changed too.
She had a radiance about her now, an ease, a softness that hadn’t been there before Seattle.
And Leanne had a hunch it had something to do with Joe.
He’d gone home to California after the last concert, due back at his newspaper internship for a couple weeks, but he was supposed to meet up with them again today.
Leanne watched Nora adjust the flower crown in her hair, humming a tune that sounded a lot like the one her grandmother had sung with Shep Moon. There was a peace about her now that hadn’t been there before, like someone who’d finally exhaled after holding their breath for too long.
Maybe they both needed this summer more than they ever realized.
Freckles and a suntan weren’t exactly fashionable in the suburban housewife set. They preferred pale skin, pink lipstick, and freshly pressed dresses—like they’d just stepped out of a Women’s Day magazine and into a casserole contest.
Leanne didn’t give a damn about that anymore.
This trip had cracked something open inside her.
What had started as a quest to find her mother had morphed into something else entirely.
A slow-burning revelation. A mirror held up to her life—not the polished version but the real one.
And in that reflection, she saw a woman living for everyone but herself.
Well. Not anymore.
She still wasn’t entirely sure who she was, but she knew who she wasn’t.
Gone was the woman who ironed dress shirts and vacuumed in pearls. Who scrubbed the baseboards while dinner roasted and whose morning began with slicing grapefruit and ended with folding Dean’s socks into perfect little rolls.
She didn’t want to be a woman whose whole identity was in her roast chicken and her ability to poach a damn egg.
There were better things to do. Like wearing sandals and shorts and dancing in the rain.
Like sleeping in. And God, when had she last done that?
Not since Nora was born. Not since before secretarial school.
Not even as a teenager. While other girls spent their Saturdays gossiping and painting their nails, she’d been up at six—reviewing vocab cards and ironing her pleated skirts.
Even her mother, in one of her rare moments of maternal clarity, had told her to relax. “You’ve got the rest of your life to be responsible, Leanne,” she’d said, swatting a record sleeve against her thigh. “You don’t get a second chance at seventeen.”
Leanne had rolled her eyes at the time, certain her mother was being ridiculous. Eleanor Bell Strickland giving out life advice? Please.
But now, standing here at forty-five, the music pulsing in the background and the scent of fried dough and cigarettes curling through the air, she finally understood.
Her mother had been right. The thing that scared her the most was how much time she’d spent trying to be perfect when what she really wanted was to feel something. To be someone.
And maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t too late.
She wanted to sleep in, dammit.
Not just on Saturdays. Not with one eye on the alarm clock and a to-do list already ticking in her brain.
No—she wanted to wake up when her body felt like rising.
To stretch luxuriously in a bed she didn’t have to make the minute she climbed out.
Maybe she would wander barefoot onto the back patio with a mug of hot coffee and let the birds serenade her instead of the sound of her husband clearing his throat and asking where his tie was and when his toast would be ready.
Leanne wanted a life where she wasn’t poaching eggs for anyone but herself.
And wasn’t that something?
Onstage, Janis Joplin belted out “Summertime,” her voice raw and glorious, curling into the late-afternoon sky like a promise. The sun was low and golden, brushing everything with magic, making her believe life could be different.
Leanne swayed to the beat, the grass damp beneath her sandals, her cutoffs soft and worn. Beside her, Nora swayed too—smiling, yes, but also scanning the crowd with that dreamy, distracted look.
She was looking for Joe.
Leanne bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling too wide. Young, summer love. So intoxicating. So fleeting. So dangerous.
God, she hoped that young man didn’t break her daughter’s heart. Because Nora, for all her newfound fire and grit, still had that softness to her. That hopefulness. That trust. And heartbreak—well, that had a way of hardening a gal if she wasn’t careful.
Leanne had the scars to prove it.
She slid an arm around her daughter’s shoulders, pulling her close just for a second. Nora didn’t pull away. They both stood there in the golden light, mother and daughter, two women at two very different crossroads, both wondering what came next.
And for the first time in a long while, Leanne didn’t dread the question.