I thought of Kate, in her fanny pack, the way she regarded my face, familiar. Like she had seen layers in me, wholly different from ones that I’d been discovering in my time here.
“He made bad decisions. And I knew about them—and he knew I knew. So I felt like I had to make a choice as well.” She shifted, pushing a hand through her hair. “All or nothing. I went with the second one.”
“So that was that?” I replied. “You just cut ties with all of them?”
“It felt like the only thing I could do.” She sighed. “He wasn’t changing. Neither was this place. So I just removed myself.”
These words were so clinical. Like it was that easy. Maybe for her, it was. But here, now, I needed her to know I saw it another way.
“Is that what you did with me, too?” I asked.
She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “That was different.Iwas the liar.”
This was not the word I was expecting. “Liar?”
“I was unhappy,” she said. “It wasn’t your fault. But I couldn’t fake it. And I didn’t want my sadness to become your sadness.”
I thought of my baby book, opened and then closed. “I was sad without you, though.”
Another silence. I hated awkwardness, always had. But this time, I didn’t try to chase it away.
“I’m so sorry, Finley,” she said finally.
Weird how you don’t know what you need until you get it.And right then, I realized how very much I had needed this: just to be honest with her.
“That’s the problem with all-or-nothing thinking, or so I am learning,” she said. “It’s the same thing that appeals. There’s no in-between.”
“Maybe there is, though,” I said.
She cocked her head to the side. I had her attention.
Now I took a beat before saying, “Maybe not in that moment. But look at us. We’re here, now. I never would have thought it was possible. But somehow, it’s…”
I paused. Thinking of the right words to follow.
“Not all and not nothing,” she finished for me. And there they were. “Somewhere in the middle.”
That vast, open middle. So much space for both fear and hope.
We were similar, my mom and I, and not just in our shared looks. I, too, had thought that my own life could only be one way: Colin, college, everything planned out. By bringing me to this place, even if she hadn’t planned to do so, she’d taught me otherwise.
I’m different here,I’d told Lana. But even then I wasn’t, not yet. Now I felt this truth catch up with me. With us. All that was left was to let it settle in.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Nice,” Nurse Geralin said, looking at the blood pressure gauge. “Right where we want it.”
My mom had still been asleep when I left for the Egg. Then, thanks to Cardoon and his buses, I’d hardly had a chance to think much about our talk the night before. When I returned after closing and found her at the table, facing the water, I’d slid into the seat next to her, now distinctly aware of the lack of questions and mystery. Without them, there was another space. Maybe this one we could fill together.
Just then, there was a knock at the door.
“Come in!” my mom yelled. A moment later, Jeremy, the eco-designer from the Tides, appeared in the kitchen. He was in a plaid shirt and jeans, clearly off duty, and carried a tray of plants.
“Hope I’m not intruding.” He smiled. “I told Kasey I might drop by. Is she here?”
“Not at the moment,” my mom said. She waved him to a seat and he took it, then put the tray between them. “What are you doing with these?”
“I found them at my new place,” he replied. “I’m trying to fill it out with native species. Which is hard to do when you don’t know their names.”
