I tried picturing Bat Lady blasting classic rock in this dark room. The image was simply too weird.

I stopped and listened again. Nothing. Across the room I spotted a giant fireplace. The mantel was bare except for one photograph. I began to move toward it when something made me pull up.

There was a record on the turntable.

I took another look. I knew this particular record well. This record-the one Bat Lady had most recently played-was called Aspect of Juno by a group called HorsePower. My parents listened to it a lot. Years ago, when Mom and Dad first met, my mother was friends with Gabriel Wire and Lex Ryder, the two guys who made up HorsePower. Sometimes, when Dad was traveling, I would find Mom listening to the music alone and crying.

I swallowed. A coincidence?

Of course it was. HorsePower was still a popular group. Lots of people owned their music. So it happened to be sitting on Bat Lady’s turntable-big deal, right?

Except it was a big deal. I just didn’t see how yet.

Keep moving, I thought.

I started again toward the photograph on the mantel. The fireplace itself was filled with soot and burnt, yellowed newspaper. I lifted the picture gently from the mantel, afraid that it might fall apart with a mere touch of my hands. It didn’t. The glass on the frame was so thick with dust that I tried to blow it clean. Dumb move. The dust flew into my eyes and up my nose. I sneezed. My eyes watered. When they stopped, I blinked my eyes open and looked down at the photograph in my hand.

Hippies.

There were five of them in the picture: three women, two men, and they were standing girl-boy-girl-boy-girl. All of them had long hair and bell-bottom jeans and love beads. The women all had flowers in their hair. The men had scruffy facial hair. The picture was old-I would guess that it’d been taken in the 1960s-and the five were probably college students or around that age. The image reminded me of stuff I’d seen in a Woodstock documentary.