“I’m so glad you’re writing a novel,” he says. “I always hoped you would try again.”
“Thanks. Me too.”
“How’s it going?” he asks.
“I love working on it, and I have a lot of ideas,” I say. “But it’s hard to keep momentum up with my job. Pretty frustrating.”
“What’s frustrating?” my mother asks, coming in with a mug of tea and a plate of toast for me.
“Hope’s book.”
“Not the book itself,” I clarify. “Just finding the time to write it.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Mom says. “I wish you didn’t have to work so hard.”
“It’s okay,” I say, because I don’t want to worry them. “I’ll figure it out. I didn’t mean to complain.”
They exchange one of their loaded glances.
“You aren’t complaining,” Dad says. “Maybe that’s the problem. If you let loose with complaints, what would you say?”
“I’m really okay.”
“I had a lot of complaints last year,” Mom says. “I was tired of being bored after retiring. Puttering around Burlington, going home to a sad little apartment. So I said to myself, you know what, Martha? You don’t want this. What do you actually want? And it was this place. It was the companionship of your dad.”
I’m shocked she’s confiding this so directly. My parents are usually more private about their personal business.
“She showed up here in the middle of the summer and told me she didn’t want to sell the house and wanted to try again,” Dad says. “Obviously it was a risk. But if she hadn’t… we wouldn’t be here right now.”
“I feel like you’re trying to impart a parental message,” I say.
“Indulge us,” Mom says. “Close your eyes. Think about it. What would you do if you could throw off your worries and responsibilities and do exactly what you wanted?”
It’s not something that requires much thought. “I’d quit my job, move to England, and finish my book.”
“England!” Mom exclaims.
“Yeah. You know I’ve always been obsessed with British novels. I have this vision of going to the countryside and writing.”
I hesitate to mention Felix, because it feels wrong to include something I probably can’t have, even in a dream life.
But if I were being honest, he’s part of it.
And I guess that’s the point of the exercise.
“There’s also a boy there,” I decide to admit.
“Oh?” Mom asks.
“That guy I met over the summer, on the cruise. I really liked him, and I asked him to maybe try to date long distance. But he turned me down. Said he didn’t think either of us was ready. But I can’t get him out of my head.”
“Are you still in touch with him?” Dad asks.
“No. But his sister reached out to me recently and said something that made me wonder if he still thinks about me too. There’s a part of me that would like to see him again. Just to test the waters. Maybe when I’ve finished the first draft of my book.”
“It sounds to me, Hope, like you know exactly what you want,” Mom says. “And like I said: that’s the battle.”
“It’s never easy to make changes,” Dad says. “But you’re at an age and stage of life where you do have choices. Don’t rule them out.”
