She’d found it that morning, tucked behind a shoebox of old tax returns in her late mother’s closet. A Post-it note was stuck to the back, the handwriting unmistakably her own: “Mom – for the drive to chemo. We listen together. Love, L.”
By the time the last track, “Then You Look at Me,” faded out, the sun had fully set. The parking lot was dark. Lena’s tears had dried into salt trails on her cheeks. The car felt different. Warmer. Less like a metal box and more like a cathedral.
She remembered the day they bought it. Tower Records. Her mom had held it up like a trophy. “Look, Lena! ‘My Heart Will Go On,’ ‘Because You Loved Me,’ ‘The Power of Love’—it’s all the best ones. One CD to rule them all.” Her mom had a habit of calling everything “the one CD to rule them all,” even a collection of Gregorian chants. celine dion all the way cd
Not a dramatic sob, but a quiet, leaking sort of cry. The kind that comes from a place you didn’t know had a faucet. Celine’s voice soared, impossibly clear, impossibly huge. “’Cause I’m your lady, and you are my man…”
The date on the Post-it was from five years ago. Her mother had lost her battle three months after that note was written. She’d found it that morning, tucked behind a
The player whirred. A quiet hiss of silence. Then, the first piano chords of “The Power of Love” filled the car.
And sometimes, a CD from 1999 is the only thing that knows how to take you there. Love, L
She saw her mom in the kitchen, flour on her cheek. She saw her mom in the hospital bed, hair gone, but still humming. She saw her mom in the passenger seat of this very car, pointing at a billboard and saying, “You see that? She feels it, Lena. That’s the secret. You have to feel it all the way.”
The CD case was a battleground.
The song ended. A moment of silence. Then the tick of the laser moving to the next track.
Her phone buzzed. A text from her dad: “You okay, kid? You don’t have to do it all today.”