“Like all the women in our line,” Nora whispered. “Like all women should.”
They climbed back into the Lincoln. Nora wiped her cheeks and flicked the radio dial just as a warbling Elvis tune slipped through the speakers like a memory dusted off and dressed for company.
“Oh my God!” Nora squealed, twisting the volume knob. “I love this one.”
Leanne chuckled. “Elvis was all the rage when you were little. The King of Rock and Roll. The man who changed sock hops.”
“Why’d they call those dances sock hops anyway?” Nora asked, toeing off her shoes with a stretch.
Leanne smirked, tapping the steering wheel. “They came a few years after high school for me, but according to my cousin, who was a sock hop queen, it was because once you got to the gym, off came the saddle shoes. Nobody dared scuff the waxed floor. Not unless you wanted Sister Margaret breathing fire.”
“Wait, the same Sister Margaret who was forced to retire last year?”
“The one and only. I think she was ninety-three.”
Nora cackled, tilting her head out the window like she was drinking in the night sky. The Lincoln rumbled forward again, its headlights slicing through the dark, winding highway. The road stretched out ahead—uncertain, winding, open.
Just like the future.
Chapter Thirty-Three
They’d pulled into the motel so late the night before that Nora hadn’t seen much beyond the faded neon VACANCY sign and the silhouette of pine trees looming like sleepy sentinels in the dark.
But now—morning.
Nora sat at a weather-stained picnic table, notebook open, pen moving. The lake stretched before her like a silver platter from her mother’s china hutch. Mist curled from its surface as the sun peeked over the hills. There was a stillness to the lake that was a mix of something eerie and tranquil all at once. Birds chirped from overhead, and the air smelled like pine needles, dew, and a hint of motel coffee drifting from a cracked window behind her.
Her bare feet pressed into the cool, damp grass, and she let the sensation ground her. Anchoring her to this moment. To this place.
She wasn’t writing a story. Not a poem, scene, or even a character sketch. She was just writing an amphigory of what was. The slant of the light. The way the water caught it like glass. The ache in her lower back from sleeping half-curled in the Lincoln. The heartbeat of being alive.
Freewriting had been encouraged by her teachers, but writingwithout purpose wasn’t an indulgence she’d allowed herself. Normally, her pen worked in desperate bursts to capture something before it vanished. A story idea. A snippet of overheard conversation. A one-liner that might someday become a first sentence. But now…she was just observing. Soaking in the world like her mother soaked in a hot bath after vacuuming the whole house from top to bottom.
This was what it meant to be a writer. To notice. To translate air color and sensation into ink.
She wanted, more than anything, for whoever might read this notebook someday to sit down on this exact bench—feel the splintering wood under their thighs, the morning air’s chill, the tickle of dew on their ankles—andknow.
The door creaked open behind her. And she saw her mother poking her head out, hair still tousled from sleep, brow furrowed. She looked panicked for a second, not like she had last night on the side of the road, but still, it was an emotion that she could pick up quickly.
They’d all been too spooked by Eleanor’s vanishing act. On edge now like every absence might be permanent.
“I’m right here,” Nora called gently, lifting her notebook with a wave.
Leanne strolled across the gravel lot, her gaze lifting toward the lake, which sparkled beneath the rising sun. “Wow,” she breathed, squinting into the morning light. “I didn’t see this last night. It’s beautiful.”
Nora closed her notebook apace, the soft snap of the cover more of a reflex than anything else. She wasn’t ready to share what she’d written—not yet. The idea of calling herself a writer still made her throat feel too tight, and she feared she might choke on the word. Writing was still sacred, and she wasn’t ready to hand it over for inspection.
Lucky for her, her mother didn’t ask.
Instead, Leanne tilted her head back and closed her eyes, allowing the sun to warm her face. The light caught in her eyelashes and gave her a glow Nora had never really noticed before. She looked…peaceful.
Nora smiled. She knew exactly what that felt like.
They hurried through their morning routine, neither of them wanting a repeat of the long lines they’d endured at past festivals. Nora pulled her hair back into a loose ponytail, slipped on her sandals, and tried not to think too hard about whether Joe would be there.
It had been weeks since she’d seen him. Weeks since he’d vanished into the music-scattered sunset with his camera, notebook, and maddening ability to make her laugh at exactly the wrong time. But she hadn’t felt too far from him, looking for theChronicleat every newspaper stand they saw, reading his byline and smiling. She hadn’t meant to fall for anyone over a single summer. Especially not Joe, destined to vanish once they returned to school that fall.
But her stomach flipped anyway, and she knew—just as she knew when a song was about to crescendo, that if she saw him again, it’d be like pressing play on something she couldn’t pause.
