But now? Now she saw it. All of it.
The guilt twisted inside her like a bottle cap. How blind she’d been. Well, no more. Her mother deserved more. She deserved joy. Ease. To be the woman she’d become on this road trip. They all did. And Nora was going to make sure she, her mother, and her grandmother stayed that way.
Eleanor gently patted her daughter’s hand. The gesture was small but substantial. So simple it might’ve gone unnoticed if not for how it made Nora’s chest ache.
Her mother, usually so composed, so careful, allowed herself a heartbeat of vulnerability, resting her head, just briefly, on her own mother’s shoulder.
Nora felt like an observer in a sacred space, watching something private unfold. The pat. The lean. The movements were almost imperceptible—but they carried the weight of so much more.
Affection had never come easily between her mother and grandmother, not in the way Nora had always longed for. But something about this summer had softened the edges, had cracked something open.
And for the first time, Nora let herself believe that maybe it wasn’t too late for them to find their way to each other.
Part SixHomeward Harmony
Summer 1969
Chapter Forty-Six
Seventy-two days had passed since Eleanor had last stepped foot in this house. Seventy-two days of music, of movement, of chasing echoes of the girl she once was. The Lincoln coasted to a stop in the familiar driveway, and a different kind of silence settled in. Heavier. Thicker. Not the quiet before a song but the hush after one ends, leaving her to wonder what came next.
She didn’t move at first. Her hand rested on the car’s door handle, fingers curled tight. Inside that house waited her past, her grief, her aging bones, and the space Henry had once filled like a bass line—steady, low, reliable.
The scent of old denim and cigarette smoke still clung to her jacket, souvenirs from the road. She hadn’t washed it on purpose. There was something sacred in the smell, a reminder that said she’d lived this summer, not just passed through it.
But now she was home. Or was she?
She’d been too tired to retrieve her car from the airport, and Leanne and Nora had promised to fetch it tomorrow.
Eleanor hesitated, bracing for the flood. The weight of the silence,the ghosts that might rise like smoke the second she crossed the threshold. Would the walls feel smaller than before? Would the rooms trap her, press in around her, remind her that the music was fading from her mind the same way it had faded from this space?
No.
She took a breath. She would not let it be like that.
She wanted to step inside and feel Henry’s presence, not as a void but as a warmth. She wanted to remember the joy—the nights they danced barefoot in the kitchen, the lazy Sundays spent on the porch with records spinning and coffee cooling too fast. She wanted to see Leanne again, no longer the woman weighed down by expectation but the girl who used to leap across the living room, her fingers chasing chords across ivory keys, hope in every note.
She wanted to turn on the record player, let the needle hum and crackle to life, pour herself a cup of tea, and sink into her old chair like her life was still whole, still steady.
She just wanted normal. Or something close enough to pretend.
But Eleanor knew, deep down, that life would never be normal again. Whether she stayed in the car or stepped inside her old house, the truth would follow her like a shadow. Things had changed, even the ones that hadn’t. She still had dementia. Still carried that ticking clock inside her chest, her head.
The funny thing was, sometimes she knew what was happening. But other times she did not. And worse—she knew exactly what would eventually happen and couldn’t stop it. Eleanor had watched her grandmother go through the same thing. Her own mother spared losing her mind by a tragic early death.
The part that frightened her the most was the lack of control in her undoing.
Roxy put her paws up on the dash, tongue lolling out as she stared at the familiar house.
Eleanor turned her head slowly, her neck stiff from the long drive and weeks of travel and performing. Leanne sat beside her, shifting the car into park with a soft click, her face a mixture of exhaustion and resolve. Nora offered a quiet smile in the back seat, and Eleanor could still smell the ocean in her granddaughter’s hair—sun, salt, freedom.
The memories of the road, the concerts, the sunsets had become some of the most cherished in Eleanor’s life. But she’d also realized that the life she’d led before mattered too. Perhaps most of all. The people she was with now were the loving parts of her existence. She hoped that when the darkness came to claim her completely, it wouldn’t take away Leanne and Nora first. That she’d be granted more time in the light before the fog rolled in for good.
The doctor had said there would be “lucid moments.”
God, let there be an abundance.
Leanne swung open the creaking car door and stepped out of the car. Through the car window, Eleanor watched her daughter circle to the back, open the trunk, and gently lift out Eleanor’s worn travel bag and her guitar. The sight of it struck something in her chest. Her fingers itched to play. Would she still remember how?
