Joyce closed the journal slowly, her fingers lingering on the worn edges of the pages as if the weight of what she had just read had settled into them.
A heaviness pressed against her chest.
This… this was a part of her grandfather she had never known existed.
To her, Thomas had always been just that—Grandpa. Quiet, kind, ordinary in the way that made him feel safe and familiar. Never once had she imagined that he had lived through something like this. That he had written like this. That he had loved like this.
They didn't even know he used to make music.
Not her parents. Not anyone in the family.
And somehow, she was certain—
not even her grandmother, Penelope… Poppy, as he used to call her, knew.
It was as if he had taken this entire part of his life, folded it carefully, and buried it somewhere no one would ever think to look. The music. The journal. Margo.
Joyce exhaled slowly, closing her eyes for a moment.
And then, quietly—
A thought surfaced.
What had become of her?
What kind of life had Margo lived after Thomas left?
Had she stayed in that town, still singing those same songs? Had she left, like he did? Had she found someone else… or had she remained alone, carrying something she never said?
The questions came one after another, soft at first, almost distant—
The same way they must have once come to him.
Joyce opened her eyes again, her grip on the journal tightening slightly.
And then, another thought followed.
One that felt heavier.
More difficult to ignore.
What did Margo truly feel?
The question lingered.
Unanswered. Unreachable.
Just like it had been for her grandfather.
Joyce let out a quiet breath, closing the journal fully this time.
But even with it shut, the story did not leave her.
It stayed.
For days, it lingered in her thoughts, weaving itself into quiet moments, into the spaces between her routines. She found herself thinking not only of her grandfather—but of her.
Margo.
There was something about her that refused to fade.
Not the way Thomas had written about her. Not the way she had remained just out of reach, even in memory. It was that same feeling, that same distance, that same unanswered question that seemed to echo long after the last page.
And before Joyce realized it—
She was thinking the same thing her grandfather once had.
And just like him—
She couldn't let it go.
—
Joyce began to search.
At first, it was scattered—small attempts, half-formed ideas. But the more she tried, the more determined she became.
She looked for anything.
Anything at all that could lead her to Margo.
But there was almost nothing.
Her grandfather had left behind only the journal… and the vinyl record. No photographs. No full name. No clear trace of who Margo was beyond those pages.
Even the record itself revealed little.
No title.
No proper credit.
Only a single handwritten phrase.
For Thomas.
Joyce had stared at those words longer than she cared to admit.
It felt too intimate. Too deliberate to be meaningless.
But beyond that—
There was nothing.
The war had come not long after their separation. Any records that once existed could have easily been lost, destroyed, or simply forgotten with time.
It should have been enough to make her stop.
But it didn't.
Joyce had no intention of giving up.
So she kept searching.
She retraced what little she knew—returning to the places her grandfather had written about. The city where Margo once performed. The theaters where her voice had once filled the air.
Most of them were gone.
Some had been rebuilt into something else. Others stood barely recognizable, their past buried beneath years of change.
Still, Joyce asked.
To anyone who might know.
Old workers. Musicians. Shop owners who had been there long enough to remember fragments of another time.
She wrote down the lyrics of the song—carefully, exactly as they were—recorded the song and showed them to people who might recognize it.
Most didn't.
Some thought it sounded familiar, but nothing certain. Nothing solid.
It took time.
Longer than she expected.
But eventually—
A lead.
It wasn't the name Margo.
But it was close.
Margaret.
A name that still surfaced now and then when people spoke about old theater singers—someone who had once been known, in that quiet, fading way time leaves behind.
But Joyce didn't know.
She didn't know if this Margaret was her.
She didn't know if the name had changed after the war, or if time had simply reshaped everything, including identity, or if Margo had ever been her real name at all… or maybe it was simply what her grandfather had called her.
She didn't know.
But for the first time—
She felt like she might.