No. It was time for her to go home. Time to face the diagnosis her doctor had given her. Time to plan out what the rest of her life would look like before she lost the capacity to do so.
Shep didn’t know it yet, but this was goodbye.
Eleanor slipped Roxy into her worn leather bag and tightened the strap across her chest. The pup nestled in without a fuss, like she knew and also was resigned to their fate.
Eleanor stepped out into the maze of tents and faded flags. The old Irish goodbye—no fuss, no fanfare. Just a quiet exit stage left.
She picked her way through the colorful sprawl, the patchwork quilts and daisy-chained teenagers, the smell of lingering weed smoke, and extinguished campfires. Her sandals crunched against discarded bottle caps, wrappers, and crushed grass.
The air was different now. No longer did it hum with bass guitars or crooning voices or crackle with energy. Soft. Mellow. Like the closing notes of a perfect song. Eleanor refused to cry, walking away from the stage, from the band, from the wild and beautiful thrill that had defined her summer.
Because she refused to believe that this was an ending. Rather, it was an encore.
Scanning the crowd, Eleanor realized she wasn’t exactly sure where to meet Leanne and Nora. She was certain someone had told her—Leanne, probably—but the memory had floated away, soft and slippery, like a lyric she was sure she once knew.
Panic made her heart skip a beat. But then, the world appeared to have finally done her a favor. She glanced up to see Leanne standing right there, arms crossed, eyes a contradiction between relief and wariness.
“I wasn’t sure you were going to come,” Leanne said.
“Why not?” Eleanor kept her voice light though she already knew the answer.
Leanne’s smile tilted gently. “You looked awfully comfortable out here on the road. That rock star of yours didn’t seem too eager to let you go.”
Eleanor followed her daughter’s gaze, glancing back toward the tent where Shep was still playing with his bandmates, head thrown back in laughter, completely unaware that she’d slipped away. He probably just thought she’d gone off to the restroom.
“All good things must come to an end,” she whispered.
Leanne cocked her head. “Do they really have to?”
Eleanor hesitated. “I suppose not. But for this old gal…” She smiled, a half lie on her tongue. “I’m ready for the next stage.”
Her throat tightened around the syllables, the finality of her statement. The next stage—what a cruel phrase for what was waiting. Not a stage with lights or applause. No encores. No set list. Just the slow, inevitable erasure of everything she knew. Everything she was.
She took Leanne’s hand between both of hers. The softness of her daughter’s skin startled her. Youth was so easily forgotten when wrapped in an aging body. Her own hands looked foreign sometimes. The thinning skin, the map of blue veins, the delicate brittleness of bones that used to strum a guitar without effort.
And then Nora was there, slipping into place like a missing puzzle piece. Joe Dumas was with her, hands in his pockets, eyes scanning the crowd like he’d already written this scene in one of his articles.
Three generations reunited at the end of a summer that had changed them all.
“Hey, Grandma,” Nora said, and that word didn’t sting quite as much anymore.
Eleanor gave her a soft smile. “Hey, sweetheart.”
She looked at Nora and Leanne—her girls—and let the moment root inside her.
Even if she forgot it one day, she hoped this summer would live on in them.
Her eyes shifted to Joe, standing tall beside her granddaughter. They made a sweet-looking pair, Eleanor thought. Nora with her hopeful eyes, Joe with his tangled curls. They had that electric energy about them that could be spotted a mile away, one that burned hot and fast. Still, Eleanor hoped her granddaughter wouldn’t tether all her dreams to just one boy. College was coming and, with it, a wide-open world Nora had only just begun to taste.
“Joe,” Eleanor said, pausing beside him, “didn’t you say you had one more question for me?”
He grinned. “Was it everything you dreamed of?”
Eleanor looked out over the fields, now dotted with tents being folded, guitars being zipped into cases, the last notes of music still drifting faintly in the warm air.
“It absolutely was, young man,” she said. “And more.”
They began walking, the crowd flowing around them like a river with no beginning or end. And somewhere along that winding path, Eleanor leaned into her daughter.
