“I’m here. Hey, Dad.”
“Hi, angel. So, what’s this all about?”
“Some exciting news, perhaps?” my mom said, her smile carrying through in her voice.
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it exciting. But news? Yes.” I cleared my throat, wincing at the sting, and closed my eyes, knowing it was best to rip it off like a bandage. “Aunt Shirley’s house caught on fire last night.”
As predicted, my mom gasped loudly enough that the neighbors probably heard her, and my dad said, “What’d she say? Did she say there was a fire?”
“Oh my heavens. Are you okay?” Mom’s voice rose with every word. “What happened? Did Chuckanut make it out? Where are you staying?”
“One at a time, Mom.”
She expelled a deep breath, then asked, “Chuckanut?”
“She’s fine.” I’d only seen her briefly when Addison and I had left. She’d been soaking up the sun and the attention of everyone on the diner’s patio, so she barely paid me any mind when I’d buried my face in her neck and squeezed, realizing that Ford was an absolute saint. Not only had he watched her for me last night when I couldn’t take her with me to the hospital, but he’d also bathed her so only the faint hint of smoke lingered.
“And you?” Mom asked, her voice shaking. “Are you okay, honey?”
“I’m fine, too, Mom,” I said, but my voice cracked, and she heard right through it.
I wouldn’t call losing my home—and possibly my business—beingfine, but what else could I be?
“Oh, honey, I know this must be so awful for you.” She tutted. “But maybe it’s for the best.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, blinking through the shock of what she’d just said, the crack in my chest growing a bit wider at her words. While I knew she didn’t mean for them to come off as dismissive, that was exactly how they had. I definitely got my sunny disposition from her, but there was such a thing as toxic positivity, and my mom was teeming with it. Sometimes when catastrophe struck, people didn’t want to hear that everything happened for a reason or that maybe it was for the best. No, maybe it just sucked ass.
“That didn’t come out how I meant it,” she said. “I just mean that now you have nothing left. Nothing holding you there.”
I huffed out a disbelieving laugh and shook my head, so tired of having this conversation with her. Without fail, she’d mention it every single week on our phone calls, and every week, I felt like I was disappointing them over and over again by not going home. But by going home, I’d feel like I was disappointing Aunt Shirley. I couldn’t win.
“Except for the life I’ve built here over the past couple years,” I said.
My mom huffed, her disapproval loud and clear. “Oh, your brother told us all about thatlife. I didn’t realize that fellow you’ve been telling us all about was such a…” She sniffed. “Well, I’m not going to repeat the word your brother called him, but I’m sure you can use your imagination.”
I closed my eyes and dropped my head back against the seat. OfcourseAsh would report back to my parents about his encounter with Beck and then scurry off to Jamaica like the coward he was so I couldn’t lay into him. “Well, did he also tell you that the reason they even spoke was because Beck was at my house, fixing the things I tried to pay someone else to do? Or that the only way I remember to eat half the time is because he makes sure I do, even when I’m swamped? Or that he’s the one person here who’s made this place feel like home?”
My mom tsked. “Oh, honey. If he’s really the only person who’s made Starlight Cove feel like home, isn’t that more proof that you don’t belong there? You belong home,here, with us. With your family. The people who will love and support you through this while you figure out what you want to do next.”
And that was the kicker—I didn’t know what I wanted to do next. I’d crafted a life based on other people’s expectations—from my love for animals that had bloomed because my parents sent me to stay with my aunt over the summers, to the school I chose on the West Coast to stay close to family. Even moving to Starlight Cove had been because someone else had made the decision for me, and I’d done what was expected.
Who even was I without everyone else’s expectations tied to me like strings?
While my mom’s intentions were pure—she just wanted me closer because she loved me—I knew what would happen if I went back home, because it was the same thing that always happened. I’d do what they thought I should, with little to no regard or care as to ifIactually wanted to, because that was who I was. A people pleaser to my core, especially when it came to my parents. Yes, I was thirty years old, and yes, it was ridiculous, but it was what it was. And at least I was aware of it enough now to be able to avoid it.
But I wouldn’t be able to avoid it forever.
Addison opened the car door and slid into her seat, holding up a large bakery bag and shooting me a grin. I tried to smile back, but it must have come off more like a grimace because her eyes softened.
Before I could tell my mom—once again—I wasn’t planning on moving back to Washington, she cut in, “So, when’s your flight back?” And the hopeful note in her voice dropped another boulder into my already churning stomach.
“Mom,” I said softly, shifting my attention out the passenger window. “I’m not moving back home.”
“Rightnow, you mean.”
No, I meant I wasn’t moving home, period, but I couldn’t handle opening up that can of worms and dealing with the fallout of that conversation after everything else. I thought that my moving here, thousands of miles away, meant I’d get a reprieve from that ever-present pit in my stomach over the thought of disappointing my parents. But it’d somehow gotten worse, the guilt like an unwanted houseguest who just wouldn’t leave.
So instead of correcting her and reiterating my stance, I just said, “Right. Not right now.”
