“Thank you,” Leanne said quietly. “I needed a change.”
Nora simply nodded, a knowing smile tugging at the corner of her mouth as if she’d been waiting for her mother to catch up.
Outside, the Nashville evening buzzed with neon and twang. American flags hung from balconies over the bars, and overhead fireworks randomly sparked. Honky-tonk bars spilled music into the streets like broken water mains—steel guitars, fiddle solos, the occasionalyeehawechoing off the brick. The air smelled of fried food, diesel, and something sweet—honeysuckle maybe, or the lingering perfume of a woman who’d just passed.
They strolled down the sidewalks, alive with laughter, patriotic pride, and stumbling boots. Leanne had been worried she might feel out of place, but bell-bottom jeans were everywhere. Finally, Nora pointed at a bar that had a line of twinkly lights strung across the doorway and a band they could hear clear as day from the street.
“This one,” she said with a decisive nod.
Inside, the bar was a motley buzz of voices and clinking glasses and a singer hollering into the microphone about heartbreak and the highway. After a short wait, they slid into a sticky vinyl booth near the back, where the speaker above them crackled like it might give out atany second. Photos of musicians hung on the walls, and in their booth was a singer named Jet Moon, wildly popular in the 1920s. He had a fiddle propped on his shoulder, and a mega-watt smile that melted plenty of hearts.
The air was thick with the heat of bodies that an overhead fan did little to mitigate. The whole bar was unmistakably southern. Laughter everywhere. Beer in mason jars. A couple two-stepping between the tables ignoring the fact that it wasn’t a dance floor.
Leanne took it all in, trying not to look like a tourist in her borrowed blouse.
They ordered fried chicken and two draft beers because that’s what everyone else seemed to be doing. Leanne had never been a beer drinker. Wine, occasionally. A dainty sherry at Christmas. But beer? Beer had always struck her as the sort of thing that bloated you and made you burp—decidedly unladylike—and was relegated to men.
Still, when the waitress thudded the cold glass onto the table, Leanne lifted it like she knew what she was doing. She took a sip. Let it roll around her mouth like she was appraising it. Crisp. Bready. A little bitter. Kind of like life.
Nora took a sip and let out a low, satisfied “Mmm,” her eyes twinkling. “This is my first beer.”
Leanne looked over, genuinely surprised. “Really?”
“It’s not like they hand them out in the school cafeteria,” Nora joked. “And I didn’t exactly attend a lot of parties. And the ones I did, I was always too nervous about drinking. I had water or soda in my cup the whole time.”
Leanne laughed, then softened. “Like mother, like daughter, huh?”
No sooner had the words left her mouth than something inside her twisted. She didn’t want that to be Nora’s future. Playing it safe. Always waiting for permission. Choosing sensible shoes over sandals with embroidered flowers. She wanted her daughter to be brave, to feelthe fire of life and run toward the flames—not hide behind a smoke screen, like Leanne had done for too many years.
They ate the chicken with their fingers, grease glistening on their knuckles. Nora picked hers clean to the bone. Leanne managed two pieces before her stomach reminded her she hadn’t eaten this kind of food in over a decade.
The band played on—twangy and alive—and Nora bobbed her head to the music, mouthing the words to a song neither of them had ever heard before. She looked radiant, flushed from the heat, from the beer, from life. Leanne couldn’t take her eyes off her. In the stillness between heartbeats, she wasn’t just a mother watching her daughter grow up.
She was a woman watching another woman become who she was meant to be.
Had her own mother ever looked at her like that?
And it struck her like a clap of thunder between the chords that time was a thief. One day, this girl would be gone. Off to Yale. Off to love. Off to heartbreak and discovery and God knew what else. And this night? This night would be a sweet and sharp memory that might cut her mother when she thought of it too long.
But for now, it was here. A perfect night frozen in southern heat. Her daughter was beside her, wearing a blouse she’d once bought on a whim and never worn. Their laughter threaded through the music like harmony. Time slowed, the world softening around the edges, like they’d stepped out of reality and into something eternal.
Leanne raised her glass and clinked it gently against Nora’s.
“To first beers,” she said.
Nora beamed. “To second chances.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
They’d been at the festival for hours, and still no sign of Joe or her grandmother.
Nora tried to keep her eyes peeled, scanning every mop of dark hair and every harmonica-stuffed shirt pocket in the crowd for Joe, and every silver-haired, guitar-wielding woman for Eleanor. Eventually, the search gave way to surrender. The sun was high and harsh, baking the international raceway until the ground steamed and the people glistened. The southern air clung to her skin like syrup—thick, heavy, sweet with the scent of barbecue smoke, sweat, stale beer, and a whisper of something earthier drifting from the crowd in rolling plumes. Everyone smelled like rebellion.
Up onstage, beneath a cloudy sky, the young superstars of Led Zeppelin tore into “Whole Lotta Love,” and the field erupted. Bare feet stomped in the dirt, bodies pressed close, arms flung in the air like surrender flags to the gods of rock. The band was relatively new and had risen quickly to the top.
There weren’t really barriers here. Just people. Thousands of them. A lawless, barefoot sea of denim and fringe. People danced like theydidn’t have spines, throwing their heads back and air-guitaring with conviction.
Someone bumped into Nora and sloshed beer down her arm. She didn’t flinch. Just rubbed it in like it was part of the ritual. Her skin was already sticky anyway, freckled and pink from days under the sun, and her hair curled against her neck like ivy. A layer of grime dusted her shins, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn shoes. She also couldn’t remember caring less.
