Page 54 of Windward Hearts

Hope put down her project and snuggled up into her grandmother’s side. It was as comforting now as it had been when she was a child and, once again, Hope was struck with a wave of happiness that her sister had convinced her to come spend this time with Miriam.

“I like it here,” Hope said, tucking her head onto her grandmother’s shoulder. “Magnolia Shore. I honestly love this little town.”

“I love it too,” Miriam said, smoothing Hope’s hair. “There’s a lot to love about it. But talk to me more about why that seems to be stressing you out so much.”

Hope paused, sorting through her thoughts. “It just wasn’t the plan, you know? None of this was the plan. But…” She paused again, but Miriam didn’t rush her. “The disruption of the plan made me realize that I didn’t totally have a plan. I was just working at the restaurant, and that was fine, I liked it. I would have kept doing it. But I’m not sure that that counts as, you know, a life plan.”

Miriam hummed. “Well,” she said. “One thing I’ve learned in my life is that plans change. And, yes, sometimes you don’t have a plan, not really. Things are rarely as linear as you’d like them to be.”

“That is very annoying advice,” Hope complained. “I’m not saying it’s bad advice, but why can’t things just be easy?”

She felt Miriam’s quiet laughter shake where they were cuddled up against one another.

“I hear you, sweetie. But if things were always easy, we would miss out on a lot of the good stuff.”

“Yeah,” Hope said absently, thinking about this. “I guess that’s kind of my problem. Because I don’t know if I should try to get back on the line where I started or just… let the diversion be the new line.”

Miriam hummed. “And what would this new line look like?”

Hope barely even dared to say it out loud. “I don’t know,” she hedged. “I mean, like I said, I like it here. What if I… just stayed?”

To Miriam’s credit, she didn’t reveal anything beyond a little jolt that went through her body.

“I’m not saying I’ve decided,” Hope added, even though just saying it out loud had sounded really appealing. “But I like spending time with you. I like being part of the book club. I like the friends I’ve made here. I like my job at Riverstone Kitchen. And I…”

“Yes?” Miriam prodded when Hope fell silent.

“I think I have a really big crush on Jared,” she admitted in a whisper. “And I feel so silly about it, because he’s probably not even interested in me that way. I mean, he’s super professional, so he probably never even thought about me like that. So, I really shouldn’t put that on my list of considerations at all, but⁠—”

“Whoa, whoa,” Miriam interrupted before Hope’s torrential words could go any further. “Listen, I don’t know what the future holds. I might have a lot of experience in this life, but even I, in my great wisdom, do not know the future. But I think that there is a lot of merit to taking risks. To telling the people you like that you like them, even if it might end up causing a little bit of mess. It’s hard to do that, especially when you’re young. You haven’t made enough swerves yet to know that veering off the beaten path will turn out okay. But, honey.”

Miriam shifted so that she could look at Hope more directly. The love shining in her eyes made Hope feel warm and happy and safe.

“Happiness is always worth pursuing,” Miriam went on. “Grab for it when you see it. Sometimes it will work out. Sometimes it won’t. But it’s worth trying.”

“I guess that sounds right,” Hope said, even though she still felt doubts plaguing her.

Luckily, Miriam seemed to understand that her lingering doubt wasn’t because Hope didn’t trust in her grandmother’s advice.

“Think about it,” she advised. “I mean, as my recent illness showed us, nothing is guaranteed. You don’t know when life is going to throw an obstacle in your path. So waiting for the so-called right time to do something? It’s a trick. There’s never going to be a perfect time. There’s only right now.”

“I will definitely think about it,” Hope promised. It was the best she could offer at the moment. She didn’t know where the future was taking her, but she felt really hopeful about the possibilities before her, and that was a refreshing change from feeling anxious, as she had been just a little while ago.

“You have one life, my darling,” Miriam said, pressing a kiss to Hope’s temple before picking her quilting project back up, accurately sensing that Hope needed some time to work through their discussion on her own. “Don’t let fear stop you from living that one life to its absolute fullest.”

Hope picked up her project too, and let her mind drift toward what the absolute fullest might look like if she truly allowed herself to dream.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Hosting dinner for Winnie and Shane the other night had put the party-throwing bug in Eleanor, and she’d gone rather all out for book club snacks tonight. Admittedly, they were not precisely seasonal, but they had chosen a haunted house mystery for this week’s book club, and so Eleanor had gone with the theme. She’d drawn upon all the years that she’d hosted Halloween parties for Jeremy’s classes at school, only added an adult classiness to the food. She’d done a charcuterie plate with chocolate covered walnuts that she’d made to look like little bugs, then cut out green apple slices, smeared them with brie to sandwich two together, and used pine nuts for fake teeth. They looked like adorable, tasty little monsters.

She had puff pastry in the shape of witches’ hats with thin shapes cut out of salami to decorate them. She hadn’t actually done anything to the marinara sauce for dipping, mostly because the idea of trying to make it look more like blood had just seemed a stretch too icky. She wanted it to be cute, a little silly, and tasty. She didn’t want to scare people with the food… the book had been scary enough.

Maybe it was goofy, and goodness knew it wasn’t very springlike. But if making spooky snacks for a haunted house book club night was wrong, Eleanor did not want to be right.

She was just wrapping up putting out bananas decorated with chocolate chips to make them look like ghosts and musing on why she didn’t eat bananas more, given how delicious they were, when the door cracked open.

“Oh, Miriam!” she cried, barely remembering to put down the plate of food before throwing her arms around her friend. Miriam felt sturdier than she had in the last few months when Eleanor embraced her. Eleanor almost hadn’t realized how frail Miriam had seemed during her illness, and what a brutal contrast that was to her usual vivaciousness. “Oh, sweetheart, you’re looking so great! You don’t know how happy I am to see you back in good health! And to have you back at book club!”