Except…she knew she would forget. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week, but one day.
And that, perhaps, was the most heartbreaking part of all. Knowing she’d lived an experience worth remembering, and still, it would slip through her like water through her fingers.
Not because it didn’t matter. But because even the most beautiful memories couldn’t outrun the storm gathering in the labyrinth of her brain.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Leanne made her way back to the motel alone, the sound of her sandals sticking faintly to the pavement with each step. The evening air had cooled, but the day’s heat still clung to the asphalt, rising in little waves around her ankles. In a strange way, this felt like a test. A dress rehearsal for what the future might look like—her, by herself, learning to walk without someone else setting the pace.
After Leanne had used a bobby pin and a pair of tweezers to pick the lock on the handcuffs they’d managed to get themselves locked into, Joe had asked Nora to stay a little longer. They would grab a bite, maybe find some pie and coffee, maybe not come back until much later. And Leanne had waved her not-so-little girl off with a smile, swallowing the sharp pang that caught her in the throat. Nora deserved something like this—a summer story, a boy with ink-stained fingers, a memory that would live in the margins of her life forever.
A luxury Leanne had never let herself indulge in.
There had been a boy, once. Back before secretarial school. A young-looking Humphrey Bogart who drove too fast and smelled like tobacco and motor oil from his mechanic shop. Her parents hadn’tapproved, of course. He wasn’t “serious” enough. He wasn’t “the future.” So she had done the right thing and let him go.
God, she was so tired of doing the right thing.
She rounded the corner of the motel and spotted the phone booth—mercifully unoccupied. The glass pane was streaked with dust, and someone had scribbled a peace sign in black marker across the metal. She stepped inside, clutching the coins with her damp palm like they were tickets to the moon.
The receiver stared back at her, daring her to lift it from its hook. Was it even worth it?
Dean probably wouldn’t answer. Or if he did, it would be short, hurried, like she was in the way. There was always a meeting, or maybe he’d decided to go to the club for dinner. Or she’d call his office, and he’d have left five minutes ago and was on the train, or he was about to leave and rushing out the door. And really, what could she possibly say from three thousand miles away? The conversation she wanted to have was not appropriate or fair to conduct over a long-distance delay.
But the silence between them had grown louder than any argument she could imagine.
Leanne released the breath she’d been holding and slipped in the first coin. Then another. Asked the operator to connect her.
Rang once.
Twice.
And then—his voice.
“Hello?”
Leanne froze. That voice, so familiar and foreign all at once. The air in the booth seemed to vacuum itself out.
“Leanne?”
She swallowed. “Hi,” she said softly. “Dean.” His name strange on her tongue. Stranger still that it had only been a few weeks, yet she felt she was calling from another life.
“Where are you?” he asked. Not unkindly. Not warmly. Just…expectantly. Like he was still trying to fit her into his schedule.
“We’re in Seattle,” Leanne said into the receiver, her voice sharper than she intended. “At the Seattle Pop Festival.”
There was a beat of silence on the line. Then Dean said, “Seattle? I thought you were going to California.”
She bit the inside of her cheek. That had been weeks ago. “I told you when I caught you last. And I’ve sent you postcards from each stop we’ve been at.”
Another pause. A faint rustle—papers being shuffled, maybe. Like he was searching for the postcards in a pile of mail. “Well,” he said, “this is the first I’ve heard of it.”
Of course, he never listened when the details didn’t involve him. And the mail, well that had always been her domain.
“We found my mother,” Leanne said, in case he didn’t remember her mentioning it as he’d hung up the last time.
“So why aren’t you returning to New York already?”
There it was. The question cloaked in command. The unsaidWrap it up, would you?He didn’t ask how Eleanor was. Didn’t ask how Leanne was. Or Nora, for that matter. Just…logistics. Always so clean and efficient with him. Cut and dry. Emotions were inconvenient.
