I bit my lip, recalling the sting of his words.Grace obviously set this up. She somehow knew you’d be there tonight and tricked me into coming.“Not really.”
Her gaze slid from me to her nephew and back. “He talks about you, you know. He thinks you’re smart and interesting.”
I gave Davis a curious look, then turned back to his aunt. “You missed the UMass game the other night,” I said. Memories of her on the sidewalk, announcing plans to gossip about pickleball and boys, washed back to mind.
Grace wrinkled her brow. “I had other plans. How about you? Big plans today?”
“I actually stopped by to grab this.” I wiggled the notebook in my hand. “I’m on my way to check out another local park before tonight’s class.” Letter-writing was scheduled at a variety of times throughout the week, making it available to everyone. I didn’t have anywhere else to be, so I attended them all.
“Which park?” she asked, snapping into motion.
I followed her to the register.
“Puffers.”
Davis reached for my book when I stopped at the counter.
Grace turned to face me. “I hear you have a secret admirer.”
“Who?” Davis and I asked in unison.
“Whoever sent you flowers,” Grace said. “Olivia called on her way home.”
I looked to Davis, then Michael, and my cheeks flooded with heat. I forced a tight smile for Grace. “I’m sure they were from someone back home.”
Her brows rose. “Are you? Because the way I hear it, you’re making quite a splash around town. And I didn’t only hear that from Olivia.”
I puzzled a moment over her meaning. I had made a lot of new friends. “I’ll keep you posted,” I said, avoiding all eye contact and busying myself with my purse.
“I expect you will.” She chuckled softly as she floated away looking wholly self-satisfied. “Enjoy Puffers park,” she called. I returned the signed credit card slip to Davis with haste and grabbed the journal.
“Told you,” he said. “She means well, but she’s a meddler.”
Chapter Fourteen
At Puffers park, I walked the trail until I found a perfect spot to enjoy the pond and people. It was too cold to swim, but I could easily imagine the beachy area packed with families and college students on a summer day. For now, the still water reflected the gorgeous display of early-fall colors, and the view from my elevated location was absolutely breathtaking.
I spread a blanket and took a seat, then unpacked my bottled water and leftover charcuterie, along with my new journal and pens. As an added bonus, my cell phone had two bars of signal, and I planned to use them before heading home. Until then, I had a lot to process.
For starters, I’d realized last night that I hadn’t yet allowed myself to think about my parents’ big request. They wanted me to take over their shop, their life’s work. Their dream. They’d cleared it with Annie before asking me, but they wanted the whole thing to be mine. I swallowed a lump of emotion. It was an enormous honor. But was it my dream? And if they were already old enough to retire, how much longer would Annie and I have them with us? Was that morbid to think?
I couldn’t imagine a world where my brilliant, kind, loving parents didn’t exist. I didn’t want to. A world like that would forever be darker. The thought pressed the air from my lungs.
I pushed the awful idea away, unable to sit with it a moment longer, and I asked myself two tough, but important, questions.
What was I doing with my life? What did I want to do?
Emily once wrote that she found life so startling there wasn’t enough time to do anything else. If I truly wanted to emulate her words, I needed to start living. If I wanted to be more like her, I was beginning to realize, it would mean continuing on as I was. Emily had hidden behind her door in the later years. I’d spent my twenties hiding in plain sight, behind my busyness.
The thought was as unexpected as it was jarring. So, I sat with it a moment.
Cecily had known at twenty-one that she was on the wrong path, and though it’d cost her a lot of money and nearly two more years of education, she’d changed directions, gone into nursing, and never looked back.
I’d never been that certain about anything, and I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever been truly happy. Not just complacent.
I stacked a small slice of cheese onto a cracker and pushed it into my mouth. I should’ve taken inventory of my life sooner. Instead, I’d been running full speed in the same direction since college without questioning why. That wasn’t something I could blame on anyone other than myself.
And this,I thought,is why I’m filling notebooks at breakneck speeds.There were a lot of things I hadn’t given enough thought over the years, and once I’d started, it was as if a dam had broken. I uncapped a lavender-inked pen, opened my new journal, and began to write. The words flowed until my head felt light and my heart unburdened. When I raised my eyes to the beauty around me, I felt as if I were coming up for air.
