She smiled. “Not for my sake.”
“Do it for me,” Zoe said.
I laughed. But a squiggle of doubt fluttered in my chest. I’d applied to Ravenscrest at least in part because of Chris, tailoring what I wanted to the life I thought we were building together.
Did I want to work on Mackinac?
“It’s your choice,” Beverly said. “You need to make the decision that’s right for you. But I would certainly encourage you to apply.”
—
I looked aroundmy room, my refuge, where I’d read and dreamed and studied, scribbled in my diary and tried on sticky lip gloss with Daanis. I hadn’t written my happy ending yet. I wasn’t even sure exactly what it looked like. I’d imagined all these things holding me back. But the only thing that could hold me back was me.
This room…It wasn’t who I was now.
I hugged a floppy yellow bear tight and popped him in the carton to be sent with the rest of my stuffed animals (most of them) to the women’s shelter in Petoskey. Adulting the heck out of my childhood bedroom. Repurposing my history to make other children happy, like building furniture from reclaimed wood.
A memory of Joe slammed into me.
“You just need to find the right material. The right project,” he’d said, his brown eyes focused, his brow creased in concentration, the words so perfect I wanted to cry.
I sniffed hard and kissed another stuffie goodbye, making room on my shelves and in my life. Out went the shriveled flower crown from my First Communion, the bowling pin from my fourth-grade birthday party, the stack of Mad Libs Daanis and I had completed years ago.
I plucked Joe’s shirt from the back of the chair and cradled it in my arms, but in this moment it had lost its power to comfort. I was so mad at him. Mad and hurt. Because when I told him I wasn’t sure what to do, he’d tried to make the decision for me. He’d made an assumption about my feelings and my future, just like Chris.
“Have a safe trip,” he’d said.
Jerk.
How could he be so right about me and also so wrong?
I heard the familiar pop of the front door and thought, gladly,Dad. And then heard, instead of the jingle of his keys in the bowl, my mother’s firm tread across the living room carpet. “Annie?”
Because Dad was never coming home again. Grief was a papercut, sharp and unexpected. “In here,” I called.
She appeared in the doorway, her gaze going from me to the bookshelves to the flannel shirt in my arms.
I balled it up and stuffed it in the closet. Out of sight, out of mind.
“You’re awfully busy all of a sudden,” she observed.
I flushed. I’d been home for months, entombed in a shrine to my past life. “There’s so much. I can’t believe it took me this long.”
“Sometimes it’s hard,” she said. “Letting go.”
“It’s just stuff,” I said deliberately, echoing the words she’d given me after Dad died.
Something moved across her face, recognition or grief, a ripple on the surface gone too quickly to be identified. She looked around. “We’re going to need more boxes.”
Together, we sorted and discarded, cleaned and put away, slowly letting go of the pieces of my childhood that didn’t serve me anymore.
I took a deep breath. “I talked to Beverly Powell yesterday. She suggested I get my teaching license here in Michigan and apply to be a substitute at the school.”
“Is that right,” my mother said.
Not making assumptions. Not offering advice. It was as if she didn’t care. But that was child Anne talking.
“I’m thinking about it,” I said.
