PRESENT DAY
I slip into my room through the window, landing with my mother’s guitar at my side. Its roses twist around me, steal my heart. I just played this guitar once held by Tori Rose that has nearly as many legends as she does, and I made it my own. I made our intertwining stories my own.
Breathless, I’m flushed in the applause of the stage and the memories of Edie and my words afterward across the bar, with me sitting on one side and her polishing wineglasses on the other. We talked under the night sky and fluorescent lights that loom over Back to Me & You.
“Wow, you . . . can sing, kid.”
“Thanks.”
“She’d be proud. I wish she could’ve seen that.”
“Me too.”
I set her guitar on the hanging chair, beneath the one on the wall that Grams gifted me, and someone clears their throat from across the room.
“So was that her grad gift to you?” Nana.
I spin to my bed where both my grandmothers are sitting, side by side, clutching each other’s hands. I wonder if they can see the joy of the stage still dancing across my skin. How I felt there what I always feel singing with Britt, something I’d written off as more about the girl I sing with and what I can’t have than the music. But here it is, right in front of me.
I want it. I want the music.
My grandmas look so frail, sitting there before me, aged by their tragedy. They won’t survive it, they won’t survive it, they won’t survive it.
Grams stares as Nana’s eyes flicker between me and my mother’s guitar, and she pats the bed in between them, scooting over to make space.
All across my room are framed pictures of us and other tangible reminders of everything they’ve done for me. There are the books they bought me, the posters we picked out together, mostly of Taylor Swift accompanied by Tori Rose, ones I grabbed on my own. And then there’s that latest framed photo they took of me and Britt at graduation.
And here I stand, wearing an old Regret You T-shirt, fresh from singing in her club, with her supposedly lost guitar.
“Mia,” Grams says, and I sit between them. “What’s going on?”
They’re finally asking about her, about the hunt. Why do I wish they hadn’t?
“It was part of it,” I say, and they each take one of my hands as the stars bleed down on us. They look at her guitar. “She . . . she led me to it.”
Grams nods, and Nana sits too still, stricken.
I think back to Britt not wanting an album, an era, full of regrets.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, but I don’t want to be. I don’t want to regret this too.
“Sweetheart, why are you sorry?” Grams brushes my hair back, giving a shaky smile, and Nana softens too, squeezing my hand.
“Because I’m like her. But I’m also not. I want what she wanted, but I’m also not her. And I know I can’t go but—”
“Why can’t you go?” Grams asks, and it’s like all these years were nothing. But I’ve seen it, seen the pain they face. That wasn’t imagined.
“What do you mean?” I shake my head, getting up and pulling my hands away, standing in front of them. “I can’t do that to you, not like she did. You need help at the inn, you need me. And she ended in tragedy; why would I follow that path? All anyone cares about is her fame. You couldn’t even talk to me about the gift she left, how should I have expected you’d be okay with me following her, following music?”
Nana’s voice struggles to stay even, but her expression is gentler, the same as it’s been for eighteen years. “Then we should be sorry.”
“Mia.” Grams reaches forward for my hands again, and I let her. “We wanted to let you find her on your own. We backed off this summer because we didn’t want you looking over your shoulder at us. We wanted you to know your mother.”
“What about all the times before this summer? You’ve never wanted me to know her.” It comes out too sharp, and it shatters their features, and I hate myself a little more for that.
Grams, the storyteller of the three of us, takes the reins. “It’s hard to see so much of her in you, but you’re your own person too, Mia. You’re your own story. Of course we want you to know her. It’s just . . . it’s hard to be the ones to tell you. That’s not fair, but it’s true.”
“But you were so relieved when I said I was staying here, going to college, helping at the inn.” I gesture faster with each word. All this time and they claim they wanted me to know her? I love them with this entire piece of my heart, but that wasn’t clear, it never was.
“Sure we were,” Nana says, a careful equation in each of her words. “Selfishly. But not if you’re not happy. We let her go, you know.” Her voice breaks, and Grams rubs a hand over her back softly. “We’d let you go too.”
“But I didn’t want to do that to you.”
Grams gives the slightest smile. “Really? Or was that the easiest excuse?”
From anyone else, that’d come out harsh, but from her, it settles into every time I’ve run away. The two of them get to their feet and hug me, and I’m overwhelmed by vanilla and love and years and the women who’ve raised me.
“We love you, Mia. We want you to be happy. You finish whatever story she left,” Grams says as she and Nana cross the room to my door. “And then you tell us your decision.”
They leave with only one more backward glance.
My mother showed me the way; they gave me permission. Now all that’s left is me.
I settle onto the chair in front of my vanity and pull out my phone. Mom never made an Instagram—it wasn’t invented when she died—but her bandmates did. And so did David Summers, but his is private. I’ve looked at the band’s a million times, memorized their feeds.
Edie Davis’s account is perpetually inactive with her last photo being a slice of cheesecake from 2011, accompanied by two random pictures of guitars.
Mateo Ramirez, the owner of a large record store in Music City, is constantly posting new song recommendations and pictures of himself with Sara Ellis, his wife of fifteen years, on her tours.
Patrick Rose. His feed is mostly beach pictures, so that narrows his location down to just about anywhere along the coast. In the latest one, he’s with a dark-haired woman, sporting a ruby ring. Something about the picture turns my stomach. I don’t know if he’s him, if he or David is my father, but in this, he’s moved on. In this, he’s no longer caught up on her.
Needing to get away from that image and whatever slew of emotions bombards my heart at the sight of it, I click on to the last member’s page, the only one still living the music, who would truly know if it’s worth the chance of regrets.
Sara Ellis.
Her profile is a mix of short videos of her in front of the piano, new and rising artists she’s supporting, and sunsets. Her bio is her name, a keyboard emoji, and a single line: music keeps you young.
Staring a second longer at the album cover that’s her profile picture where she’s standing before the sunset, I click the message box. Before I can second guess, I type and send.
Today, 11:18 p.m.
@miapeters: hi Sara. My name’s Mia Peters, and I’m Tori Rose’s daughter. I know you were in a band together. I’m not sure if you’ll see this, but I just had to try. She’s left me this hunt. It’s all these clues that lead around our town and unlock bits of her journey and her story. I’ve spent my whole life searching for her with so few leads, but her music, my music, is starting to call me with everything she unravels.
My family hasn’t been the same since she died. We barely talk about her. Tonight was the first time in years that we have, and they told me to choose my path, to tell them my decision. I know she was sick, I know she made the most of everything and lived her life regardless, but I’m still stuck on how her last album is named Regret You, on how my town remembers her all wrong.
Fate’s Travelers meant something to her. You meant something to her, so I’m kind of trying to find anyone who can help me figure out what she was like behind the spotlight, what she’d want to be remembered for. Do you ever regret it? Did any of Fate’s Travelers?
I just wanted to message. She told me to follow the music, but I don’t know where it’s going to lead.