PRESENT DAY
It’s an unspoken rule in Sunset Cove that no one returns to Back to Me & You before the sun sets. Yet, I sit out on the curb like I used to, and the pink building behind me has lost some of its mystery at this hour, but none of its allure.
I reread the lyrics on the yellow envelope while I wait.
I’d build a shrine to keep you, even when you’re gone,
I’d build a castle to show you, show you all my love,
I’d whisper sweet nothings to the dusk and dawn,
All to bring you back to our reckless love.
But instead I return to basics, to where it all began,
I trek the trail of memories, your hand not in my hand.
I start and I unravel and I find closure in our end,
But all I really want is that sweet beginning again.
Right now, Britt is practicing, laughing with the band. This week is the first time I’ve missed seeing Lost Girls rehearse in over three years. It’s the first time I’m not sitting in the corner and penning new sheet music to accompany the lyrics. Instead, I stare out at the parking lot as a black sports car pulls in.
Britt said let’s get a sign, so here I am.
The driver steps onto the pavement, shaking purple hair out of her face and flicking on her cat-eye sunglasses as she walks toward the building. Places as cool as this one always need time to put on their best illusions, and it looks like Edie’s opening today.
I get to my feet, and when Edie sees me, her smirk flips on its axis. Still, she heads toward me, sparing me a distant once-over and moving to open the door, past a trash bin and empty bottles.
“Hi,” I say to this woman of my mother’s past.
“What do you want?” Her voice is cold but there’s something else, just like there was in her stare the evening before. She kicks a can out of her way.
I cut right to it. “You knew my mom.” I’m tired of giving in, I’m tired of wondering without the truth, piecing her together behind the scenes. She deserves more than this. And I need these stories. Now.
Edie’s silence is an answer of its own.
She fumbles with her keys. “I can’t talk to you about this.”
“You were in her band. You were the lead guitarist,” I say when she studies her reflection in the glass doors instead of me. I hold the envelope closer and step forward. “And now she’s left me a hunt to find out more about her. I know you know about it. She wanted me to meet you.” She’s the first person besides Britt I’ve told about the hunt, and this pressure releases at the truth.
Edie turns, such sharp agony in the thin line of her lips. “I was wondering if that’s why you were here.”
“It’s why I was here last night too.”
Another spell of silence.
I continue because she won’t. “Why did you come up to me in the first place? If you were only going to say I look like her and mess me up and leave?” The questions are quiet.
“I never said that outright.” Her gaze drops.
“You recognized me as her daughter.”
Now, she looks at me. “Kid, this whole town recognizes you as her daughter. That’s what you are, who you are.”
I flinch, falling back into my echoing. It’s everything I want to be and everything I’m scared to become. “Why haven’t I seen you before?”
“Because I made sure you didn’t.”
“Why?”
She leans against the pink wall, crossing her arms. She looks young—like she never quite grew into her age. There’s something in her posture—a side-effect of the music—that tells me she’s still that up-and-coming lead guitarist inside, no matter how many years are lost.
I lean against the wall too, trying to look as solemn and convincing as she does. What would Tori Rose do? My mom was in a band with Edie. She must have known how to talk to her. But I can’t find the right words—I never can—so I hand her the lyrics instead. I take a leap, passing the yellow envelope to Edie with shaking hands.
Her brows furrow before she passes it right back to me without a second thought. “I can’t help you.”
“But you’re part of this,” I say. She moves for the door. “Please. I need to know her. I need to find this.” Tears spark, and everyone I love has left or been left. Everyone I know has found something more.
Edie pauses in the doorframe, hand on the glass, key in the lock. She pulls it open, eyes on mine all the while. She looks like she’s about to say something, as Grams and Nana so often do when they’re on the brink of revealing her, but she closes the door, disappearing into Tori Rose’s tribute club.
Nana’s in my room. She sits crisscross on my comforter, waiting for me. Unlike Edie, proximity to the music aged her. She’s still got freckles within the folds of her laugh lines and a mischievous look beneath—the same look Mom has in leftover pictures. But Nana’s expression has softened and worn with pain, whereas Tori Rose’s is forever free.
“Hey.” I jostle my purse, letting the notebook sink deeper into it. “Is everything okay?” Is she going to ask? Does she want to know what her daughter left me?
She says, “How was your sleepover?”
“It was good.”
“How’s Britt?” Nana pats the bed beside her.
I toss my purse onto the chair, sitting next to her and pulling my legs under me. “Good. Happy. She’s leaving soon.” She already knows this from family dinners.
Gently, Nana’s hand rises to my back, smoothing small circles over my spine. “I’m sorry, honey. I know how much she means to you.”
The guilt is suffocating, sitting here with her, but I can’t show my grandmas the hunt yet, not until they show that they want to know. I can’t tell them how much it aches to see everyone else find something to dream about, find themselves. How much it hurts to see that my mother did too.
“Yeah, well, I have you guys.” And I thank everything that’s true. “It’s fine. Really. I knew she’d leave.”
Nana’s hand stills, and panic washes over me. “How are you feeling about college?”
The shutters close around my heart. “It’s college. More school.” I recall their faces when I told them my post-high-school plan—community college, the inn—and how relieved they were.
She laughs softly, pressing a kiss to my forehead and smoothing a couple of stubborn hairs away from my cheeks. Her blouse is wrinkled, and I’m sure I’ll find her ironing it and everything else in the house, like she does when she gets antsy, within the next couple weeks. “You’re going to do great things, Mia Peters.”
I am going to do nothing.
“Thanks, Nana.”
Getting to her feet, she heads to the door. She stops there for a second, tosses me a glance. “We were thinking of doing lunch in twenty minutes. Our specialty.”
“Ordering pizza?”
“You got it.”
As soon as she’s gone, I flop back onto my bed, folding my hands across my stomach and staring at the ceiling. At my side, a picture catches my eye.
It sits in a silver frame on my nightstand amidst Post-it notes scribbled with chords and lyrics Britt left. It’s at graduation, with Britt—a snapshot my grandmas must have taken when we weren’t looking, framed, and left for me. This was before Jess found me, before I broke up with him, as we were getting ready to walk that stage. Despite the panic that made its home within me that day, in this image, we’re laughing with our caps tilted and hands intertwined.
We’re laughing and I’m looking at her in a way I didn’t even know I was capable of. It’s the first time I see it. The image of my mom under the floorboard of her room, all soft-eyed and hopeful for the camera, returns to me. Here, I look like her. Really look like her in my own eyes, in a way that feels like it matters.
The journal, graduation, college, the curb outside Back to Me & You, last night at Britt’s piano—all of them are held in this frame. Every push and pull, denial and acceptance, as I hug it to my chest.
And, of course, the first time I truly find my mother in myself comes when I’m with Britt. She’s the personification of a love song, and I can’t get her out of my head. Especially not now, not knowing the offer that remains. You’re the first person I want to cheer with. In my mind’s eye I know it all: her magic laugh, the feel of her lips, her skin under my fingertips, her voice, the stories she tells me late at night, the brilliant songs she writes, the furrow of her brows when she calls me out, the smirk on her lips when she’s right yet again.
I lean further into the mattress, groaning because I can’t figure us out right now either, and I set the picture down, picking the diary up once more.
With Britt still at rehearsal and the yellow envelope’s lyrics speaking of rewinding time, I go to the very beginning of my mother’s story, desperate to find something new to share.
It’s well-known that Tori Rose was born in the attic of the inn before it was an inn. Before Peters’ Inn became Roses & Thorns, back when the building was a tiny cinema run by my grandmas’ good friend and they lived up here together—before they came back and bought the place.
I pull the ladder down from the ceiling, climb one rung at a time, leave that nursery behind, and emerge into the space.
I start and I unravel and I find closure in our end,
But all I really want is that sweet beginning again.
This was her beginning. This was her end. It’s where she was born, where I assume my grandmas stored the gift before they gave it to me grad night, where she wrote her songs before that last tour—one of the accidental details I saved from overheard conversations.
Boxes are piled in every corner, and a lamp illuminates the space as best it can. Taking a deep breath, I open the yellow envelope, pushing aside everything except this. I read its contents, ready for more pages.
Mia,
I wondered if you’d find your way here. I hope you’ve had many good times in these walls too. Leaving this place behind without a proper goodbye is one of my biggest regrets.
As I write this, I’m looking out a tour bus window. And I have all this. I finally have it. I live for it. But I’m looking out this window, and I’m picturing the sea back home while I write my next song.
Hold on to your memories, love. They’ll get you through the lonely days. Can you see the sea with me?
Love,
Mom
Hold on to your memories. I’m trying, Mom.
Placing the envelope out of the way, I get to work. I spend hours searching, setting aside old yearbooks and tour photos that I’ve encountered a few hundred times. I find the picture of her in senior year with the rest of her class, wearing a lacy dress before the inn’s cherry blossoms. David Summers and his blond hair and sudden familiarity are just a couple of spaces over. But there’s nothing else. I empty every yet-to-be-opened and already-open box. The pieces of her pile around me, but no matter where I look in the attic, there are those same cherry blossoms beyond the window and the pool in between. Nothing else. Nothing more.
I can’t see the sea with her.