Poor Older Lady Didn’t Let Anyone Into Her Home for 26 Years Until I Set Foot Inside

Underneath was a grand piano. A beautiful old baby grand with keys that had yellowed with time and age. Sheet music was scattered everywhere across the top, covered in handwritten notes and lyrics in faded blue ink.

That’s when I saw a framed black-and-white photograph sitting on the mantle above the fireplace.

It was a glamorous picture of a young woman in a glittering evening gown, standing at a microphone with her eyes closed as if she were lost in the music.

And I froze completely because I recognized her face.

I grew up completely obsessed with jazz music. My dad raised me on scratchy old vinyl records that he’d collected since he was a teenager.

Every Sunday morning, he’d put on Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday while he made pancakes, and I’d sit at the kitchen table listening to those incredible voices fill our house.

And this woman in the photograph? She was a singer from the 1960s who had been famous for exactly one haunting song that climbed the charts and then vanished completely.

My dad used to tell me she was “the greatest mystery in music history.” She’d released one record, toured for about six months, and then disappeared without a trace.

“Nobody ever figured out what happened to her,” Dad always said. “One day she was on every radio station in America, and the next day it was like she never existed.”

But here she was.

Living across the street from me. Feeding a cat and playing sad piano music in the middle of the night.

The next morning, I drove to the hospital with a bouquet of daisies and my heart pounding in my throat. I found Mrs.

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