Somewhere in the far reaches of my soul, I found an extra store of saccharine sweetness and forced the brightest damn smile of my life. "That's enough about crazy town gossip. What's for one day," I said, shaking my head hard. "What's going on with you guys?"
Rosa fluffed her ponytail with an exaggerated groan. "We've been setting up our classrooms all morning," she said. "My room was such a disaster."
Everything made more sense now. The workout gear, the freshest cut from the rumor mill. Denise Primiani wasn't getting any baked good from me for the rest of the year.
"I can't believe how much work I have left before the first day of school," Lydia said. "I'm going to be in my classroom nonstop for the next two weeks. Goodbye, beach. Goodbye, vacation."
"It's the same every year," Rosa snapped. "Stop thinking it's going to be different because you use colored tape to organize your boxes at the end of the year."
"Why was it so bad?" I asked. It was an honest question. I didn't understand why classroom setup was such a time-consuming experience every time August came to a close.
"Oh, Annette, you should've seen it," Mom said, rubbing her brow. "The entire building was painted over the summer and everything was in a pile in the center of my room. Chairs, desks, books, boxes, everything. It was like climbing Kilimanjaro just to get started."
"I was completely convinced I was going to die in a landslide," Nella added. "It's amazing that none of us are trapped under a pile of desks."
"It was bad but I didn't think I was going to die," Rosa said.
"The summers when they paint are the worst," Mom replied. "If I wasn't retiring at the end of this year, I would've painted the room myself and been done with it."
"That seems…difficult," I said.
"You have no idea," Nella said. She was wagging that finger again and I was working overtime to keep my expression easy. "Honestly, though. You don't know the first thing about getting a classroom ready for the first day of school. You have it so easy, Annette."
This book was practically begging me to chuck it at her.
"I sure don't," I replied. "Understand, that is. I don't understand."
Lydia dug through her purse, absently saying, "We have to go. We're meeting the rest of the English Language Arts department for vertical alignment planning and we're going to be late if we don't leave now."
"Oh, yeah," Rosa said, touching her fingertips to her temples. "Winnie Walton asked me if you could recommend some new young adult historical fiction books for her World War Two unit. I told her I wasn't sure if you knew anything about kids' books."
I could put up with some bullshit but this was one pile too many. "I do," I snapped. I flung my arm toward the left side of the shop. The one overflowing with children's and young adult books. "Plenty. Tell her to stop by or shoot me an email. I have tons of new titles her students would love."
Rosa blinked at the life-size Harry Potter cutout in the corner. "Yeah, I guess so," she murmured. "Huh. I've never noticed that."
"Rosa, you can have this conversation some other time. I'm grade chair this year," Nella said. "I can't be late for this meeting."
"Girls," Mom chided. "I'll meet you in the car." Shaking her head, she stepped away from my sisters and met me at the counter. "Annette, sweetheart, promise me you won't chase the new sheriff. If he's interested, he'll come to you."
"Mom," I said, laughing off her comment. "I get what you're saying. Loud and painfully clear. Okay?"
She tipped her head to the side, her lips folded together as she regarded me. "I want the best things for you," she said.
I believed that, too. She wanted me to be happy and have everything I wanted. The only issue was that she also believed I should lower my expectations and cram myself into a tiny, wifey box. Back when I started talking about opening a bookstore in Talbott's Cove, she insisted I'd be content working at the big chain bookstore outside town. She'd argued it would be easier, less stressful, more secure. I'd have a consistent paycheck and reliable health insurance, and I understood where she was coming from. That was my mother's way of caring—being extremely risk averse.
But it also had the effect of taking an axe to my sense of agency.
"I know you do, Mom," I replied.
She straightened a display of greeting cards and postcards before stepping back. "All right. Angie Dixon's son is moving back home next month. I'm sure you remember him. Since you'renotdating anyone," she said pointedly, "I'll talk to her about setting you two up."
I reached out, trying to snatch that idea away from her. "Mom—"
"Don't worry about a thing. I'll take care of it all," she promised.
I stared after my mother as she exited my shop and hiked across the village. With her went a wave of adrenaline and I slouched against the counter. It wasn't always like this with my family. Most of the time, they ignored me, going about their inside conversations without noticing the outsider. But there were occasions when I had a clan of mothers, each one intent on babying me in her way.
It wasn't just the babying though. It was the minimizing, the way they confined me to that tiny cube and told me it was all I could have. Everything else, it wasn't for me. Too big, too small, too ambitious, wrong league. It left me hollowed out.
