Besides, she loved her job.
“And it’s not your concern either. You can’t control his life any more than he can yours. How do you feel about him moving into a house next week?”
“Good. It will give me a break from here. Him too. I think he needs some room to move.”
He wasn’t complaining, but the room was cramped for him to work at the small table.
A few times she’d seen him outside under an umbrella pounding away on his laptop, his hand through his hair, mumbling under his breath, his arms up in triumph as if he finally solved the mysteries to the world.
Maybe it was the mess he left around him before or after the housekeepers. He was getting more comfortable.
“I don’t know how anyone can live in a hotel for that long.”
“I want to say he’s used to it, but it sounds as if a month is as long as he ever has.”
If he’d found a place he liked or wanted to try for longer, he found an apartment or house, like he was now.
Even now, the clock was still ticking. He could walk away before the six months ended, and no matter how much she wanted to believe in them, she couldn’t help but wonder if what they had was enough to make him stay.
“Do you love him? Or can you feel yourself falling for him?”
Her mother never failed to cut to the root of it. “I’m not sure I’m there. Could I? Absolutely. Do I want to? I’m not positive.”
“Natalie,” her mother scolded. “You can’t control love like you do every other emotion. It’s there or it’s not. You’re letting yourself finally just be. Continue. If you think you can, then it means you are already on the way. Don’t stop it. Don’t talk yourself out of it. Don’t eventhinkabout it not working out.”
“It’s a little hard to do that considering his history of leaving.”
“And you need to stop focusing on that. This is the happiest I’ve seen you in a long time. Continue doing what you are. Everything else will fall into place.”
“It doesn’t feel as if I’ve got much of a choice but to do anything else. Thanks, Mom. I really needed the confidence booster.”
“I’m always here and you know it. But you’ve got this, Natalie. You’re the one I’ve never worried about.”
She hung up after that statement and put her phone down.
That was the weight she carried.
The pressure of being the good one, the reliable one, the child who never stepped out of line.
It had seeped so deep into her identity that even the smallest rebellion felt like a betrayal. And when she finally veered off course, the guilt clung to her like a second skin.
31
TOO DELIBERATE
“When are you going to tell Natalie that you went there for her?”
“What are you talking about?” he asked his grandmother the next week.
He’d moved in yesterday. A day earlier than he was originally told he could.
It hadn’t taken him long to bring in two large pieces of luggage. Nor to unpack and put his clothes away.
An hour after, he’d gone to the store, stocked up on more food than he’d been buying and gotten his new temporary office in working order.
“Arik. I know my grandson. You throw darts at a wall to decide where you’re going next. This was just too deliberate.”
“I told you. I was watching a cooking competition and it came up.”
