Diana didn’t mind the silence, as she was too busy spinning out over the idea that Kendrick might be right, that he was far from alone in wanting a traditional wife and mother figure who didn’t work outside the home. Heck, he probably was the kind of guy who didn’t even consider staying at home and caring for house and children realwork. Diana loved her father to bits, but she knew that he was guilty of this, a little bit. Diana’s mother had only stayed at home with her children when they were small, but Diana could remember times where her father would return home from work to find the family frazzled, a natural consequence of having three small children, and look positively baffled that dinner wasn’t on the table already. He’d never beencruel about it, nor as direct as Kendrick had been, but the implication had been clear.
Would anybody that Diana dated feel that way? Would they feel like her pride in her business meant that she didn’t need them… and did they need to feel needed? Gosh, was she destined to only date the kind of men that thought that women having their own businesses was taking feminism a bit too far?
A teeny, tiny voice in the back of her head said that she wasn’t being totally reasonable. She knew lots of couples that supported one another’s careers without reservation. Her sister Astrid and her husband, Justin, had met through their jobs, after all. They were both pediatric nurses and had both continued in their fields after marriage. Justin hadn’t even been jealous when Astrid had been promoted ahead of him! And now they had their second child on the way!
Yet the logical voice in Diana’s head wasn’t nearly as loud as the shouting of her fear. By the time the interminable meal was finally over, she was barely holding back her tears as she said goodbye to Kendrick. They both made noises about meeting up again sometime as friends, but she sensed that he too, knew they would never see one another again.
The idea of returning to her cold, dark house after that disaster of a date felt impossible, but Miriam was the “early to bed, early to rise” type, and Cadence and June would both be caught up in the hectic schedule of getting kids fed, bathed, and in bed.
A new friend, however, might be just the thing.
Instead of heading directly back to her house, Diana took a turn onto Piedmont Street, just to quickly drive by and check. And, sure enough, Eleanor’s lights were still on downstairs, indicating that her friend was up and around, not tucked snugly into bed for the night.
She pulled into the driveway, then went around to the back door to knock, feeling comfortable in the knowledge that she and Eleanor had grown close enough that Diana knew to use the “friends and family” door instead of the grand front entrance that would eventually become the bookstore’s front door.
Eleanor came to the door at once. She took one look, saw it was Diana, and lit up in a smile. Then she took a second look and saw Diana’s expression. Eleanor’s face creased in concern.
“Oh, honey,” she said. “What is it?”
She put out her arms for a hug. Diana walked directly into them.
After a tight squeeze that left Diana in no doubt regarding Eleanor’s hugging skills, which Diana would rate ten out of ten, Eleanor pulled back.
“This feels like a time for tea,” she said. “Is this a time for tea?”
“Definitely,” Diana agreed. “Chamomile or something herbal if you have it. I don’t need any more jittery energy right now.”
“If I have it,” Eleanor scoffed. “What do you take me for? Of course I do. Go ahead and sit in the cozy room—that’s what I’m calling the room where we had our club meeting. I’ll be along in a minute.”
Obediently, Diana snuggled herself into the widest, plushest armchair. She gazed out the window while she wanted, watching the errant set of headlights go by. This room would be spectacular in the winter, she thought. It would be like sitting in a snow globe.
Eleanor returned not only with tea, but also with tissues and a plate of cookies that Diana recognized as being left over from their club meeting.
“I took a guess,” Eleanor commented when Diana took a mug, a plate, and a fistful of tissues. “This feels like boy trouble. Is it boy trouble?”
“Yes and no,” Diana groaned. She explained her conversation with Kendrick on the date, how things had started promising and then had spiraled out of control.
“And now I feel crazy,” she concluded. “Was he right? Do all men secretly want this? Am I deluding myself?”
To her surprise, Eleanor chuckled a little.
“Sorry,” her friend explained at once. “I’m not laughing at you. Of course not. I’m laughing because you’re describing the story of my life here!”
Diana paused. She hadn’t thought about it that way.
It was her turn to apologize. “Sorry,” she said, cringing a little. “I didn’t mean to make it sound like I was dismissive of that path?—”
She cut herself off because Eleanor was waving the comment away.
“No, no,” Eleanor said. “I didn’t think that at all. And that’s not why I’m laughing, really. It’s more that…” She paused, thinking. “Okay, so when Brian and I got married, he was very much like Kendrick. He assumed that I would stay home, and so I did. But I was twenty-two! I’d barely been out of college a year when we got married. And I don’t regret it, per se,” she said, clearly choosing her words carefully. “No matter how chaotic and often frustrating they were, I loved those years home with Jeremy. But I do remember this one dinner party for Brian’s firm, where I was chatting to another one of the wives who I didn’t know very well. And I said, ‘I don’t know how you do it, getting your kids ready to go every day before you go to work!’ And she looked at me, laughed, and said, ‘I don’t know howyoudo it! I’d go nuts if I didn’t get to talk to adults for that many hours in a day.’”
Diana chuckled along with Eleanor.
“My point,” Eleanor continued, “is that it’s really hard for any of us to imagine what it’s like to live a path that we aren’t taking.Would I have been as willing to let go of my work life for Brian if I’d been in my mid-thirties instead of my early twenties? It’s really hard to say. It’s not a matter of right or wrong. It’s just a matter of what happened. I stayed at home, and I fell in love with it. You’ve spent the last ten years working on your business, and you fell in love with it.”
Diana worried at her lip. She understood what Eleanor was saying but…
“I guess I just worry that I fell in love with the wrong thing,” she said, then amended. “Or, not thewrongthing, exactly, but the one that’s going to chase everyone away.”
