Nearly two decades of mothering, of being needed in a way that filled her completely, and now, in just a few days, her daughter would leave for college. They would load up the Lincoln and drive to Connecticut and Yale’s vast Gothic buildings, where Nora would begin the next chapter. And Leanne would wake up in a house that echoed a little more than it used to.
Of course, it wasn’t really goodbye. Nora would call, she’d visit, they’d write. But it was an ending, nonetheless.
And what a wonderful person her daughter had become.
Leanne swiped at a tear before it could fall. This was a strange kind of joy—being proud and also breaking a little inside. To see your child step into the world and realize they don’t need you in quite the same way anymore.
To know she’d finally gotten her daughter back, only to be preparing to let her go.
She was going to miss her. That was the hardest thing of all.
Leanne didn’t know who she was without being a mother. Shedidn’t know who she was without being a daughter. Her identity had always been shaped by her roles in other people’s lives. And now, with one preparing to leave and the other fading before her eyes, she would have to sort out what all that meant. Who she was when no one else was asking her to be something.
They wandered the shoreline with their melting ice cream cones, the sweet, chocolatey cream trailing down the sides, sticky and comforting in that summer way. The ocean breeze tangled their hair, and the scent of brine, sugar, and distant charcoal grills wrapped around them with nostalgic tenderness. They were doing everything except walking back to the car—lingering, stretching out the magic a little longer, like savoring the last lick of an ice cream cone. That slow, reluctant goodbye.
When they finally sat, it was on a soft stretch of sand worn smooth by a hundred years of tide. They didn’t speak much. Just watched the sun melt into the horizon, casting the sky in molten pinks and oranges. The lighthouse winked to life like a single, solemn eye, and they all knew what it meant.
As children, that beam of light had been the signal that the day was done. The call to pack up their towels, laughter, and bare feet and head home. And it was like that now too. A quiet, unquestionable cue:Time to go.
Leanne had never been one to wallow. Not really. And she wasn’t about to start now, even though her chest squeezed with emotion.
“Time to face the music,” she murmured aloud, a slight, wry smile curling on her lips.
“What’s so funny?” Nora brushed sand from her knee.
“I just said it’s time to face the music,” Leanne replied. “Funny, right? We’ve been chasing music all summer, and yet now it feels like the real meaning of that phrase is what we’ve been avoiding.”
“Oh, I’m not so sure.” Eleanor sat cross-legged beside them, herhand still faintly stained from the fading henna, Roxy snoozing in her lap. “I think maybe we were avoiding everything before. And this summer, we did, in fact, face the music.”
Leanne glanced at the horizon one last time before it darkened. Maybe her mother was right.
Maybe they had already faced the things they were avoiding, though they all still had unfinished business to attend to. And maybe now, they were finally ready for the next verse.
“There’s another idiom that means something similar,” Nora said thoughtfully, twirling the end of her ice cream cone between her fingers. “Pay the piper. Why do you think facing the consequences always ends up tied to musicians or music?”
Eleanor chuckled, the sound weathered and warm. “Because music tells it like it is. It’s memory. Confession. Truth dressed up in melody and metaphor. Music is sharing stories—pain, joy, betrayal. Music is honest…but it can also lie.”
Leanne raised a brow. “Lie?”
Her mother nodded, brushing sand from her skirt, eyes still fixed on the darkening water. “Oh, sure. Music can make you believe something that isn’t true. A love that’s not real. A memory that’s rosier than it was. It romanticizes the ache. Sometimes, it hides the truth in a pretty chorus just to make it easier to swallow.”
Nora went quiet, taking that in.
And Leanne felt the truth of her mother’s words settle between them like fog rolling in from the sea. She thought about the soundtrack of her own life—lullabies sung beside a crib, old love songs playing in the car while her husband drove in silence, radio jingles while she wiped down countertops.
Now she had new songs. Ones from a summer of rediscovery, long drives, loud guitars, and quiet epiphanies. A new rhythm to live by.
“Maybe,” Leanne said softly, “it’s because when you finally stop dancing around the truth, you have to listen. You have to really hear it.”
Eleanor hummed her agreement. “And when you do? That’s when the real music starts.”
Chapter Forty-Five
They rinsed the sand from their feet at the public outdoor shower station, the cold water making Nora yelp and laugh. Then came the ritual—slipping their shoes back on, brushing off calves and hems, the beach already starting to feel like a memory even as it shimmered behind them.
Nora glanced at the two women she came from—her mother walking just ahead, her grandmother humming softly and adjusting Roxy’s bag over her shoulder. And suddenly, she was struck by time. How it passed, how it shifted people. She imagined her mother, once her age, walking away from this same shoreline. Her grandmother too, would she have been barefoot and wild decades before, the hem of her skirt clinging damply to her legs, or would she have hung back? There seemed to be two sides of Eleanor Bell Strickland. Which was real?
The thought made her heart ache with wistful tenderness she hadn’t experienced before.
