“I wrote this song a long time ago,” she said, her voice warm and steady. “For a man.”
The crowd laughed with her, easy and open.
“But also,” she added, “for me.”
Cheers rang out, more sincere than before. And then, she began to play.
The opening chords came slower this time—gentler. Her voice entered low and soft, growing with each verse. There was something raw about the performance. Not polished. Not perfect. But true. Because she was singing from a place so deep it didn’t have a name.
By the time the final chorus came, her voice was trembling withemotion—years of love and loss threading through the melody. Tears slipped down her cheeks, but she didn’t stop. Not this time.
When the last note faded, she stepped away from the mic. The silence held for a beat longer than expected before the crowd exploded into cheers again. Someone tossed a flower toward the stage.
She gave a slight curtsy—half embarrassed, half triumphant.
They shouted for another encore. But this time, Eleanor simply smiled and walked off, the flower tucked behind her ear, the guitar still humming softly in her hands, Roxy beside her with a little bounce in her step.
She was emotionally drained.
But also—alive.
“That was amazing. Oh my gosh—I can’t believe you’re not already on the lineup for this festival.”
The words hit Eleanor like a warm breeze—unexpected and entirely welcome.
She turned. The woman speaking was young, maybe mid-twenties, with freckled cheeks and a clipboard tucked under one arm. A red bandanna was tied around her head in that effortless way only girls born after World War II seemed able to master. She scribbled something on the form in her hand, glancing up.
“What’s your name? Where can we reach you?”
The question surprised her, and her gaze unfocused for half a breath. No one had asked her that in decades—not like this. Not as someone to book, someone to want.
“My name is Eleanor…Bell.” She wasn’t entirely certain why she left off her married name, Strickland. Only that she wanted to be the Bell of Wartime Music again. “I’m staying for the whole festival,” she said, adjusting her guitar strap on her shoulder. “I’m at the Pink Flamingo. Room seven.”
The woman nodded, jotting it down.
With a sudden burst of confidence, Eleanor added. “I’ll be on the lawn listening to music. If you need me just say my name into the mic and I’ll come running.”
The girl glanced up from her clipboard, meeting Eleanor’s gaze with a self-assured smile. “I just might.”
Roxy gave a high-pitched bark, her little legs prancing in place.
Eleanor glanced down. “What do you say we get something to eat, hmm?”
Roxy’s ears perked, and she let out another bark, clearly in agreement.
Truthfully, Eleanor wasn’t hungry. Not really. What she needed wasn’t food so much as a moment. A moment to step away from the stage, from the adrenaline still buzzing under her skin, and to…digest.
Because something had shifted.
Eleanor had stepped onstage as a memory, but she’d stepped off it as a musician.
Chapter Eight
Leanne should have paid more attention to the route.
Though they’d left just after sunrise, they didn’t pull into the Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge until well after sunset—bone-tired, bleary-eyed, and running on fumes. Dean’s secretary—ever efficient, never intuitive—had mapped out an itinerary that called for more than eight hundred miles on the first day. New York to Chicago in a single shot. On paper, it looked tidy.
In reality? Utter hell.
