Page 14

The few businesses that had a social media presence used them to promote sales and holiday events. There was nothing about employment opportunities. There were no online job boards specific to Fir Tree Grove, no local newspaper classified sections accessible through the internet or in print that she’d found. In short, absolutely nothing that fit her idea of what job hunting should look like.

Instead, she was going to have to do what had caused that knot of anxiety to take up permanent residence in her stomach. She was going to have to walk into local businesses and make conversation, basically cold calling in person. The thought was nerve-wracking. She was a stranger, middle-aged at best, and would either be under-or-overqualified for most positions depending on how they looked at it.

She’d spent her entire career with structure, and now it was all crumbling down. She needed to rely on charm and being personable to land a job here—basically, someone liking her enough to want to hire her instead of someone they already knew. It felt overwhelming. She didn’t have months or years to make friends and network until she could be the person that someone meant when they said, “I know someone who would be perfect for that!”

She needed to be perfect for something soon.

Her phone buzzed against the side table where she’d left it charging, and Nicole looked up from her knitting to see Amy’s name appear on the screen. It was after one in the afternoon in London, and Nicole thought that her daughter was probably finishing up final semester exams before her holiday vacation.

“Hi, sweetheart,” Nicole answered, setting her knitting aside. She was glad that Amy had called, and looking forward to talking to her, as always. But she also felt that pang of sadness again that she would be spending her first Christmas without her daughter there with her. She’d always known that day would come, but it wasn’t easy to navigate it finally arriving.

“Mom, I just got off the phone with Dad,” Amy said without preamble, and Nicole winced. She’d known this was coming too, and she supposed that she should have broken the news first if she didn’t want to have the call sprang on her. It had just been hard to pick up the phone and have such a difficult conversation when so much else was hard already. She hadn’t wanted to hear the disappointment or sadness in Amy’s voice when her daughter wasn’t there to talk to about it face to face.

Amy continued without giving Nicole a chance to respond. “He told me about the papers and about you moving somewhere called Fir Tree Grove? I’m trying not to panic, but this all sounds really sudden and impulsive, which isn’t like you at all.”

Nicole felt her chest tighten at the worry in her daughter’s voice. Amy had always been protective despite being the child in their relationship, and being overseas had only made her more anxious about things happening in the family that she wasn’t actually present for.

“I know it probably sounds crazy from the outside.” Nicole tried to choose her words carefully. “But sometimes big changes require big decisions, and I felt like I needed some distance to figure out what comes next.”

“But Mom, you don’t know anyone there. You don’t have a job. You’ve never lived anywhere but the suburbs in your entire adult life,” Amy said, her voice rising slightly with each worried statement. “What if this turns out to be a huge mistake? What if you get there and realize you’ve made a terrible decision?”

Nicole winced as the questions hit uncomfortably close to home, all the worries she’d been trying to suppress since arriving in Fir Tree Grove. What if she couldn’t find work? What if the charming small-town atmosphere that had appealed to her back home turned out to be stifling and isolating in reality? What if she’d burned bridges with her old life only to discover that her new one wasn’t working out? What if she couldn’t find a job, or make friends, or settle in to this new place?

“Amy, I appreciate how much you care about me.” She stood up, walking to the door leading out to the balcony and looking out over the town, trying to breathe and keep her answers measured. “But I need you to trust that I know myself well enough to make good decisions about my own life. Yes, this is different from anything I’ve done before, but that doesn’t automatically make it wrong.”

“I just don’t understand why you had to move so far away,” Amy continued, her tone shifting from panic to plaintive worry. It made Nicole’s chest ache. “Why couldn’t you stay closer to home while you figured things out? At least then you’d have your friends and familiar places and people who could help if you needed support.”

Nicole closed her eyes briefly, trying to figure out how to help Amy understand without burdening her with the full weight of how trapped and desperate she’d felt in her old life. Her daughter was twenty-six and working on her own independence halfway around the world. She didn’t need the emotional load of her mother’s midlife crisis.

“Sweetheart, sometimes you have to get far enough away from a situation to see it clearly,” Nicole said finally. “I was so caught up in maintaining the life I thought I was supposed to have that I lost track of what would actually make me happy. Moving to Fir Tree Grove isn’t just about running away from problems—it’s about giving myself space to figure out who I am on my own. Your father and I didn’t work out. My job wasn’t… fulfilling any longer. I need to figure out who I am, not as a wife or a mother or an employee, but just as me. And I feel sure that a fresh start is very much what I need.”

As they talked for another twenty minutes or so, Amy gradually started to sound less anxious and more curious. Nicole described the town in detail, promising to send pictures, and waxed poetic about how beautiful everything was and how welcoming the residents had been. She could hear the enthusiasm in her own voice, and by the time they were winding down, Amy at least sounded more supportive than worried.

“I’m proud of you for being brave enough to try something completely different,” Amy said as they prepared to hang up. “Just promise me you’ll call if you need anything, okay? I know I’m far away, but I’m still your daughter and I want to help however I can.”

“I promise,” Nicole said firmly. “I love you, sweetheart. Enjoy your adventures and don’t worry about me—I’m tougher than you think.”

After ending the call, Nicole sat back down in the cozy armchair for several minutes, both drained and oddly energized by their conversation. Amy’s initial panic had forced her to articulate her reasons for coming to Fir Tree Grove more clearly than she’d managed to do even to herself, and hearing herself defend it had made her more determined than ever to make the huge life change that she’d undertaken work.

She needed to find a job. That was the first, and most important part. Not just for financial reasons, although her savings wouldn’t last indefinitely. She also needed to feel useful and productive and connected to the town, a real part of it, not just a temporary guest at a charming bed and breakfast.

Packing up her knitting supplies, she went to get dressed, determined to spend the day systematically visiting every business on Main Street until she felt like she had some kind of lead. The prospect still made her nervous, but Amy’s worried questions had reminded her that she couldn’t let herself be paralyzed by it.

An hour later, dressed in her most professional-looking casual outfit—a pair of dark gray slacks, a cream-colored cashmere sweater, and low-heeled boots—she headed out with her purse and a small notebook where she’d written down the names and locations of every business she planned to visit. She hoped she seemed more confident than panicked, but she wasn’t entirely sure of that.

The town was already busy, with shoppers walking to and fro, delivery trucks dropping off crates and boxes, and shop owners arranging sidewalk displays. The routine of the town was in full swing, and Nicole felt very much outside of it. She walked slowly down Main Street, trying to work up the courage to enter the first business on her list.

She paused outside the bakery, watching through the window as customers lined up for coffee and pastries, and tried to imagine herself walking in and asking about a potential job. The scenario played out disastrously in her mind—she would interrupt busy staff members during their morning rush, stumble through an awkward introduction, and leave everyone involved feeling uncomfortable and embarrassed.

So much for that, she thought, feeling a little dejected. She moved on to the next business on her list, the general store, but she couldn’t keep herself from playing out a similarly awful scenario in her head. She would look desperate, or inappropriate, or like someone who didn’t understand how small-town employment actually worked. People would be polite but dismissive, or they would pity her obvious desperation, or they would wonder what was wrong with her that she’d ended up middle-aged and jobless in a town where she knew no one.

By the time she’d walked the entire length of Main Street without entering a single business, Nicole felt deflated and frustrated. She was a competent, intelligent woman with decades of experience, but the prospect of informal job hunting had reduced her to someone who couldn’t even manage to open a door and ask a simple question.

But it wasn’t the same as every other job hunt she’d ever been on. It felt like completely new territory, in a place where everything was new territory, and she had never considered this snag when making her decision.

Maybe I don’t need to be hired somewhere, she considered as she stopped briefly to get a coffee without introducing herself as someone who needed a job. She’d always toyed with the idea of starting her own business off and on—a yarn and fabric store, maybe, since she loved knitting so much. As soon as the thought entered her head though, she pushed it aside. Now wasn’t the time to go out on yet another limb. She didn’t have the capital to sink into something like that, and taking out a loan and starting an uncertain business was the last thing she needed to tackle.

She needed to acclimate to her new surroundings, make friends, find a place to live, and everything else that went with relocating to a new area first. What she needed was a job to support all of that, any job that she could do and wouldn’t hate, before she started thinking about things like starting a business of her own.