CHAPTER 13
The drive from Vermont to Boxford took a little over three hours.
She would bring a suitcase and some books but she would need more depending on her stay.
The phone call to her mother had been difficult.
“Call me when you get there,” Eve had said. “And call me tonight. And tomorrow.”
“I'll call you,” Emily had promised. “But not every day. That would be excessive.”
“It's not excessive. It's motherly concern.”
“Those are often the same thing.”
Eve had laughed at that, a watery sound that meant she was trying not to cry.
“I'll be fine,” she said. “Beth will take care of me.”
“I know she will. I just wish I could take care of you myself.”
“You have. For twenty-four years. Now it's time for me to take care of myself.”
The last thing Emily heard was her mother saying goodbye through tears she tried to hide.
Now Emily headed south with a mixture of excitement and anxiety.
But Boxford wasn't scary in itself. It was farms and orchards and the smell of earth. It was a different world, one Emily would learn to understand.
Her phone buzzed with a text, and she glanced at it at the next red light. Her mother.
I love you. Drive safe.
Emily typed back:I love you too. I'm being safe.
She set the phone down and continued driving, letting her mind wander the way it often did on long drives. She thought about the farm, about the orchard she had seen in pictures and video calls but never visited in person. She thought about Beth, huge with twins, waiting for her to arrive. She thought about the life she was leaving behind in Hull and the life she was driving toward.
It was terrifying. And exciting. And necessary, in a way she couldn't quite articulate.
She had spent too long drifting, too long searching for a place where she fit. College had been manageable, the structure and clear expectations suiting her need for predictability. But after graduation, everything had fallen apart. Job interviews were torture chambers of small talk and eye contact and questions she never knew how to answer. The few jobs she had managed to get had ended badly, her differences misunderstood, her directness interpreted as rudeness.
Her mother had supported her through all of it, financially and emotionally. Eve had never made Emily feel like a burden, had never suggested that her struggles were her own fault. But Emily knew the toll it took. The worry lines on her mother's face. The way Eve's eyes followed her when she thought Emily wasn't looking. The hovering that had intensified after the kidney transplant, as if Eve was afraid that Emily might shatter if she looked away for even a moment.
The transplant had been two years ago, but Eve still treated her like she was fragile. Still called every day to ask about her medications, her energy levels, her doctor appointments. Still worried every time Emily caught a cold or mentioned feeling tired.
It was love. Emily knew that. But it was also suffocating, in a way that made her feel like she would never be allowed to grow up, never be trusted to manage her own life.
Beth's offer had felt like a lifeline. A chance to prove, to herself and to everyone else, that she was capable of independence. That she could contribute something meaningful. That she was more than her diagnosis and her medical history.
But telling her mother had been hard.
Emily had explained Beth's invitation. The farm, the orchard, the babies. The chance to use her degree, to do work that mattered, to be part of a family that wanted her.
Eve had listened in silence, and when Emily finished, she was quiet for a long moment.
“That's a big change,” Eve had said finally.
“Yes.”
