“So, Ms. Nichols, you’ll be staying on the eighth floor with a great view of the Lady Bird Lake,” he says. “We have a pretty great spa in the hotel if you’re looking to refresh from your flight before heading up to the room. Or I can set you up with a late lunch?”

I put up my hands in surrender.

“A room key, Steve,” I say. “Just a room key. As quick as you can hand it over.”

We drop our suitcases upstairs. We don’t stop to eat anything.

At two thirty, we leave the hotel and head back toward the Congress Avenue Bridge. I decide we should walk. I figure a long walk may help jog a memory in Bailey, assuming there is a memory to jog. And this walk will lead us through the heart of downtown Austin and up toward the campus and the Darrell K Royal Stadium, the only football stadium in the city.

As soon as we make it over the bridge, the downtown splays out before us—vibrant and spinning, even in the early afternoon. It somehow feels more like it’s nighttime: music playing, bars open, garden restaurants packed with people.

Bailey keeps her head down, eyes on her phone. How is she going to recognize anything if she isn’t paying attention? But when we stop at a traffic light on Fifth Street, the DON’T WALK sign flashing before us, she does look up.

She looks up and I catch her do a double take.

“What?” I say.

“Nothing.”

She shakes her head. But she keeps staring.

I follow her eyes to a sign for Antone’s, written in blue script. HOME OF THE BLUES written below it. A couple cuddles by the front door, taking a selfie.

She points at the club. “I’m pretty sure that my father has a John Lee Hooker record from there,” she says.

I know she’s correct as soon as she says it. I can picture the album cover: Antone’s logo on the front of it—the sleek lettering in script. And Hooker singing into a microphone, hat and sunglasses on, guitar in hand. I remember a night last week—how could it possibly have been last week?—when Bailey was at play practice, and the two of us were in the house alone. Owen strummed on his guitar. I can’t remember the words of the song now, but Owen’s face while he sang—that I remember.

“He does,” I say. “You’re right.”

“Not that it matters,” she says.

“I don’t think we know what matters yet,” I say.

“Is that supposed to be uplifting or something?” she says.