Joe took it on the chin, expression smoothing into something gentle but resolute. “No, ma’am,” he said. “I’m the man who asked your daughter if she’d come with me to Europe. I made it clear she shouldn’t go unless she was okay with the plan for her grandparents. I’m not trying to steal her from this town, from her family. I’m trying to build something with her.”
“This is what you’re settling for? Some traveling circus of a life?” Krista’s mom said.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Joe said, the first edge entering his voice. “It’s not a circus.”
Krista’s mom talked over him. “It’s not the life we planned for her. What was the point of it all? The piano lessons, the foreign language courses, the advanced mathematics? We didn’t do it for us. We did it for you and you’ve thrown it all away. Can’t you accomplish anything?”
Krista’s hands curled into fists at her sides. Her cheeks burned, shame and love and fury all tangling up until she could barely breathe.
“What are you talking about?” Joe shot back, breath hot.
“Please.” Krista reached out. Her voice hoarse. “Don’t.”
Joe looked at her. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t defend me,” she said. “They’re right.”
“Krista,” Robyn said sharply.
“They are,” she insisted, laughing once, brittle. “Look at the last decade of my life. I start things I can’t finish. I juggle too much. I drag people into my big plans—my coworkers, my friends, half this town—and then I burn out and everyone else has to scramble. I started the Hideaway, and now I’m selling it. I thought I could balance everything here and still go to Europe, and that’s just me repeating the same pattern.”
“That’s not what’s happening,” Joe said, eyes dark with concern. “You’re allowed to want?—”
“That’s the problem,” she cut in. “I want too much. Andwhen I reach for it, people get hurt.” Her voice cracked. “You get hurt.”
He stepped closer, like he wanted to take her hand, but didn’t quite dare with her parents watching. “You are not?—”
She shook her head hard. “You deserve more than this. More than me. Go to Europe, Joe. Do your dream. Don’t wait for me. I’ll just hold you back.”
His jaw flexed. “Don’t say that,” he said again, quieter now. “You’re my?—”
“Stop,” she whispered. If he said anything likemy person, she was going to break wide open on the spot. “Please. Stop. Go to Europe. Live your life. Just leave me here.”
He searched her face, his expression pained, like he was looking at the door she had just slammed shut and he couldn’t quite believe it was locked.
“If that’s really what you want,” he said finally, voice rough.
Her chest screamedNo, but her mouth stayed traitorously closed.
He nodded once to Walt, once to Robyn, and even managed a polite tilt of his head to her parents.
Then he turned and walked back out into the late-day light, the screen door creaking shut behind him.
The silence he left behind was so loud, Krista’s ears rang.
Her mom exhaled slowly, rubbing her temples. “You see?” she said. “This is what I’m talking about. You make everything so…dramatic.”
“I can’t do this right now,” Krista said, backing away from the table, from the brochures, from all the versions of her life she was supposed to be holding together. “Not with you. Not with…any of it.”
Krista barely heard the murmur of voices as she moved toward the back door. She caught fragments of her dad apologizing, her mom saying something about “only wanting what’sbest,” Robyn snapping back that maybe they should reconsider what “best” looked like.
The door closed. The air stilled.
Krista sank onto the porch steps, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes until stars burst behind her lids.
She tried to picture Joe on a plane, camera bag in the overhead bin, heading for Rome or Lisbon or Paris without her.
It hurt so much she couldn’t see straight.
