Leanne forced a smile, though her stomach knotted tighter than her apron strings before she hosted Dean’s partners for a dinner party. She was glad that Nora thought she was joking, even if she wasn’t. “Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But I’m not.”
Nora shrugged, her attention already drifting back to the TV and a second coat of Revlon’s Pink Sugar. “I am sure she just ran to see a friend and she’ll be here for us to sing happy birthday to her soon. When’s Dad coming home?”
“Soon.” The lie fell easily from her lips. And Nora seemed willing to believe it, because she just kept on painting.
Leanne moved into the kitchen before Nora could ask any more questions. The room’s decor was in stark contrast to her mother’s pink. The Miller cabinets and counters were a respectable ivory. A perfect replica of Julia Child’s Queen of Sheba chocolate cake sat on the cake stand beneath its glass dome, waiting for Eleanor’s celebration.
She needed to telephone Dean, her fingers itching to reach for the phone. She picked up the receiver, twisting the cord tightly around her index finger—a nervous habit she hadn’t outgrown since her teens. His secretary answered, brisk but polite, and transferred her without question.
Dean always took her calls. No matter how late he worked or how many nights he spent in the city. She supposed that counted for something.
“Leanne?” Dean’s voice was curt and hurried on the other end of the line. “Everything okay? I’ve got a meeting in a minute.”
Leanne pressed the receiver tighter to her ear, her eyes driftingclosed for a minute as her chest tightened with longing. Longing for the time when he actually worried about her. Cared about her. Wanted to talk to her. “My mother’s gone somewhere.”
There was a pause on the other end that lasted a thousand years. Finally, he said, “Like the grocery store?”
Leanne swallowed, forcing her voice steady. “Only if people take suitcases to the grocery store.” The absurd image of a line of people hauling their suitcases by the handle through produce flashed in her mind.
Dean exhaled rather audibly—whether it was a sigh of concern or annoyance, she couldn’t tell. “Let me get this straight. You think your mother stood you up for her birthday?”
“Maybe. I’m going to call a few of her friends. She might have told them something. It’s possible I missed her message.” Leanne blamed herself even if she knew she wasn’t at fault here. “But, Dean, I think she may have gone on a trip. Out of town.”
Before today, Leanne would have said with confidence that her mother wouldn’t have up and gone on a holiday without a word. But after visiting the house, seeing the weird notes and disarray, discovering the diagnosis lying on the floor. She couldn’t confidently rule it out.
“Okay. Let me know if you need anything.” He was already slipping away, distancing himself from her and her concerns. The evidence was in his tone, even in the way his voice drifted.
Leanne hung up, the phone heavy in her hand.
She spent the next hour dialing every name she could think of—her mother’s oldest friends, neighbors, anyone who might have seen Eleanor. Each conversation ended the same: polite concern, but no one had heard from her. No one knew where she was.
By morning, when her mother’s house was still empty, the sheets on the bed still rumpled from two nights before, panic began to bloom in Leanne’s chest. A panic that was impossible to ignore.
She called the police, who told her she was overreacting and refused to put in a report. Leanne did one more sweep of her mother’s house, and she found a piece of crumpled paper in the trash she hadn’t seen before. This couldn’t be real. And yet there it was in black-and-white:The Pink Flamingo, Los Angeles, California.
“Oh, God, California? Really, Mom?”
Scribbled beneath the name of the motel were a few things that looked like maybe…songs? Leanne had no idea, but she knew one person who might. Her daughter.
Chapter Three
Nora smoothed the final photo onto the collage, her fingertips lingering on the corners like she could press the memories into permanence. A memory already slipping, soft around the edges—like a Polaroid left too long in the sun.
A snapshot of her and her friends, sunburned and half drowned from their graduation canoe trip, grinning like they’d conquered something bigger than just high school. They’d just spent a few days pretending the next step toward the real world wasn’t waiting right around the corner, ready to slap them with tuition bills and disappointing boyfriends. At least they had the entire summer to savor before college and adulthood had them bowing out of a party at the lake in favor of a decent bedtime.
The entire summer was planned out for her and her friends. Beach time, shopping, convincing their parents to let them attend a music festival, and plenty of girl time gossiping about celebrities and swooning over Dustin Hoffman and Bobby Sherman.
In the background, the Beatles’Abbey Roadplayed on the record player she’d gotten for her sixteenth birthday, and she hummed along.
Her mom had come along on the graduation trip, labeled the designated “cool parent”—meaning she brought bologna sandwiches in wax paper and kept to the sidelines with a quiet, practiced smile. Nora appreciated that her mom understood her need for independence. But sometimes, just sometimes, Nora wished she didn’t. Wished she’d stepped in a little more, asked a few extra questions, and acted like she actually wanted to know what was going on in Nora’s life instead of just standing at the edges, looking…tired.
Not a tiredness sleep could cure, but one that settled deep in the bones—like carrying something heavy for too long without knowing how to set it down. God, she hoped she never ended up like that.
Had her mom even realized this was Nora’s last summer at home? The last summer before she was supposed to go off and become someone entirely new—someone smarter, bolder?
Nora flopped onto her bed. Absent-mindedly, she traced the soft floral pastels of her bedroom wallpaper. The delicate pattern was a relic of her childhood, peeking out from behind tacked-up posters of rock bands she loved and magazine clippings of movie stars. The whole room felt like a silent tug-of-war between the girl she used to be and the woman she was trying to become.
She’d suggested redecorating once, floating the idea like a test balloon, but her mom had just given her a look—not quite a no, but something even heavier. Like the thought of changing Nora’s room was too much, as if tearing down the girlish wallpaper and repainting would make her leaving all too real. And so, the flowery wallpaper remained, along with the unspoken weight of her mother’s sadness.
