“You do lack purpose,” she said without really thinking.
“Whoa. Don’t hold back.” He laughed, lines fanning the sides of his eyes, dimples in his cheeks from the grin that always took the edge off a situation.
It was her turn to shrug. “Well, it’s true.”
“Maybe so,” he relented, “but even when Ididhave purpose, when I was in the band, when I was making it on my own, I still disappointed him, because I wasn’t doing it his way. We’re just too different.”
Out the window, Emmett had stepped in to correct Zoey’s hold on the rope, and Brodie said, “I might buy that orchard just to prove him wrong.”
“Then the trees really will die.”
He frowned. “Why do you say that?”
She turned to look at him, at his mouth tight with irritation, a bit like his dad’s. “Because you can’t live a certain way to spite someone. It never ends well. You buy that orchard because youwantto buy it—whether the trees die or not—not because your dad told you that you can’t.”
He weighed up the argument, then said, “Aren’t you working so hard all the time to spite your parents?”
Maeve went to speak, to defend herself, and then stopped and thought about it for a second and laughed that he’d caught her out. “I think my problem is that I’m trying to make them see that they made a mistake.”
“Interesting,” he replied, head tilted in encouragement for her to carry on.
She shrugged. “Being a doctor was all I ever wanted to be. Of course, I wanted to help people but I just knew that I’d be good at it. I enjoyed it, I like the science of it and the work, and it felt right.” She paused, glanced out at Zoey getting all tangled in the rope as she tried to throw it. “I think what I realized when I fell pregnant, was that for them, me going to study medicine at Stanford was more about the prestige. The kudos, you know? It wasn’t about me.”
She was surprised by how easy she found it to talk to Brodie. How, when he looked at her, it made her feel like he didn’t want to be talking to anyone else, like what she had to say was somehow precious. And it made her say things that were precious, that she didn’t say to many people. “I didn’t work so hard to spite them, I think I worked so hard in the hope that they might notice me!”
Brodie nodded in understanding. She imagined him with his platinum discs and number-one albums just craving awell done.
Maeve shifted so she was sitting facing the window rather than Brodie’s profile, the sun catching his hair as it flopped messily over his forehead, highlighting the sharp slices of his cheekbones. It was easier to talk to him if she didn’t look at him. And she found she wanted to talk to him, she liked talking to him. She watched Zoey outside attempt a throw of the rope again and miss wildly. “Do you know one day, a couple of years ago, they turned up on my doorstep? Said they were just passing through.” She paused at the memory of it, the surprise of seeing her parents in their fancy clothes standing there. They’d been back in town meeting old friends at the club, they said. She had frozen at the sight of them, thought it might be her imagination, like a mirage. “My grandma used to say that the test of a person is whether they can admit their mistakes. Whether they’re willing to change. I think that’s part of why she was so frustrated with my parents—she didn’t just think they’d let me down but they—my dad—let her down, too. She wanted him to be better.”
“Did you let them in?” Brodie asked, clearly intrigued by that turn of events.
“Oh, yeah,” she said, amused at the idea of her not doing, because seeing them had made her realize how long she’d been out in the cold. “We had coffee. They met Zoey. They asked a few questions about my work, and then they left. That was it, no mention of what had happened. No real acknowledgment of the fact we hadn’t seen each other for years. I like to tell myself that they were too proud to say they were sorry. Or at least too proud to say well done for getting there in the end, but who knows.”
“I bet they were proud,” he said with certainty. “I’d be proud of you if you were my kid.”
She turned and smiled in grateful surprise. “Thanks, Brodie.”
“It’s true,” he said, holding her gaze. She felt the look shiver over her skin even after he looked away, out at Zoey and Emmett in the back yard, and added, “So are you saying that my dad’s secretly super proud of me?” He glanced back, corner of his mouth raised like he knew that was a lie.
“I guess I’m saying that you must have worked really hard once upon a time. Not everyone becomes a superstar. Your songs are loved by people…”
He grinned at the compliment.
“Brodie, I’m not saying this to fan your ego.”
“No, I know.” He tried to stop smiling. “It’s good to hear, though. I appreciate it.”
She rolled her eyes. That made him laugh again.
“Do you despair of me?”
“Yes,” she replied but her lips twitched with a smile.
He made her laugh, she realized. Apart from with Zoey, there hadn’t been that much laughter in her life over the last few years, there hadn’t been time or reason. But something about Brodie, he could switch a moment and lighten it and make you realize that life could be funnier than you thought.
“I don’t know, Brodie,” she said, trying to be serious for a second, “do you ever think your dad was just wrong and can’t admit it? It must be pretty galling to be telling your kid one thing every day and then they go off and prove you wrong. Maybe you make him feel like a fool. Maybe that’s why he gets at you, because being any other way would admit he was wrong. Maybe it’s pride.”
Brodie raised his brows and seemed to think about it for a moment, nodding his head from side to side. “That’s an interesting way of looking at it.”
