Chapter Two
Changing the Flight
Perspiration on her face and the heels still on, Eva stared at her suitcase—the one stuffed with resort wear that had maxed out her credit card.
The sight of it made her stomach turn. This wasn’t just luggage anymore—it was a monument to her naivety, sitting in the middle of her apartment like evidence of how wrong she’d been about everything.
“No,” she said aloud to the empty room. “Absolutely not.”
She grabbed the suitcase handle and yanked it open, the zipper protesting. The swimsuits alone had cost more than her weekly grocery budget. She pulled them out one by one, each tropical print more offensive than the last.
She grabbed the sundress her mother had insisted would “make her eyes pop”—bright blue with tiny white flowers—and flung it across the room.
Next to go was the wide-brimmed hat Richard had said made her look “sophisticated”, and the sandals she’d spent an hour picking out because he hated when women wore “trashy flip-flops”.
She was performing an exorcism on the things in her life. And it felt good.
Every item she touched felt contaminated by the future that wasn’t going to happen. The white cover-up for romantic beach walks. The new lingerie still with its tags. The waterproof phone case for all those engagement ring photos she’d planned to take by the ocean.
Something inside her had snapped. She moved through her apartment like a hurricane, gathering every trace of Richard and throwing it into a pile in the middle of her living room floor.
Photos in frames. The stupid little teddy bear he’d won at the state fair.
The ‘romantic’ mix he’d made her that contained three Dave Matthews Band songs and something by the Plain White T’s.
His extra toothbrush. The books he’d loaned her—all biographies of ‘successful people’ with advice about ‘maximising potential.’
She grabbed a garbage bag from under the kitchen sink and started shoving things in.
She wanted anything that could be thrown away out of her safe space immediately.
Then she found a cardboard box for the things that technically belonged to him: his Northwestern hoodie, a watch he’d left on her nightstand, that pretentious coffee table book about wine regions he’d insisted would ‘class up’ her apartment. God, what a tool.
Her phone buzzed again: Courtney.
“I’ve been awaiting your call woman! How’s the packing slash unpacking going?” she asked without preamble.
“Oh I’m packing all right,” Eva said, shoving the teddy bear into the garbage bag with particular venom. “Packing up every trace of Richard Andrew Henderson the Third.”
“This is exactly what I wanted to hear. Screw him! I’ve literally just put the last bits in the dishwasher, so I am good to go! Want me to come over?”
“No, it’s fi—” Eva paused, looking at the destruction around her and realised she needed to actually ask for what she wanted. “Actually, yes. And bring wine.”
“Twenty minutes,” Courtney promised.
She’d spent two years trying to be the right kind of girlfriend for a tax attorney. Before that, four years trying to be the right kind of employee at a job nobody thought she deserved. And before that, twenty-some years trying to be the right kind of daughter.
When was the last time she’d tried to be the right kind of Eva?
Her gaze landed on a dusty cardboard storage box tucked in the back corner of her closet shelf. It was labelled ‘Hight School—Keepsakes’ in her neat teenage handwriting, the ink faded to a ghost of its former self. She hadn’t opened it in years, maybe not since college.
Eva pulled the box down, suddenly curious about the girl she used to be. What had she cared about? What had she wanted? Before Richard, before her mother’s expectations had solidified into the walls of her life, who had she been?
She sat cross-legged on her bedroom floor, lifted the lid, and began sifting through the time capsule of her younger self.
Dance recital programs. Honor Society certificates.
A dried corsage from prom. Her old Lisa Frank diary tumbled out, rainbow unicorns faded against the purple background.
It fell open to a December page, and something green caught her eye.
A sprig of mistletoe lay pressed between the pages—but that couldn’t be right.
The mistletoe was fresh. Impossibly, vibrantly green with tiny droplets of moisture still clinging to the leaves, as if it had just been picked.
Eva blinked hard. She’d pressed this mistletoe in here after her first kiss at the school Christmas dance fifteen years ago.
It should be brown, crumbling, dead. But it wasn’t.
She touched it with a trembling finger—cool, slightly damp, smelling of winter mornings.
Real. Fresh. Impossible. Her fourteen-year-old handwriting in glittery gel pen declared: Magic is REAL if you look for it!
! Eva quickly shut the diary, her heart racing.
She was overtired, emotional, seeing things.
That had to be it. At the bottom, a manila envelope with ‘ENGLAND’ written across it in excited block letters.
The paper had yellowed at the edges, its metal clasp tarnished from years of neglect. Eva stared at it, memories flooding back. She flipped open the clasp with trembling fingers.
Inside: a crinkled brochure for a summer writing workshop in Oxford.
The colours had faded, but the Gothic spires still reached skyward on the cover.
Her name was printed on the acceptance letter, alongside words like ‘exceptional talent’ and ‘full scholarship’.
She ran her fingers over the embossed letterhead, remembering the day it had arrived.
How her hands had shaken then, too, but with excitement rather than regret.
She’d won it in high school, the only student from Tennessee that year. She’d run into the kitchen, waving the letter, already imagining herself walking cobblestone streets between ancient buildings, notebook in hand.
And her mother had looked up from her cookbook, brow furrowed, lips pursed, and said:
“Writing? That’s not a real job, honey. That’s a fantasy. You need to focus on things that will get you somewhere. Plus, I need my girl with me to work at the boutique this summer!”
“Real careers,” her mother had continued, setting down her spatula. “Like your cousin Jennifer in pharmaceutical sales. Or teaching, like the Morrison girl. Writing stories won’t pay your bills, Eva. It won’t give you stability.”
She’d seen the genuine concern in her mother’s eyes—Sandy Coleman had grown up with nothing and worked incredibly hard to build her boutique business.
She only wanted security for her daughter, but in doing so she was crushing her.
Her father, Robert, had been standing in the doorway, his expression caught between pride at Eva’s accomplishment and deference to his wife’s practical concerns.
“Your mother might have a point, Evie,” he’d finally said, though his eyes told a different story. “Maybe save the writing for weekends?”
And Eva had listened. Had folded the dream away, tucked it into this envelope, and buried it beneath yearbooks and graduation caps.
Had let herself believe this version of her life—the one with the practical job and the suitable boyfriend and the designer bags and the beige furniture—was enough.
That wanting more was somehow greedy or impractical.
That disappointing her parents was worse than disappointing herself.
Something else slipped from the envelope. A notecard with loopy handwriting in faded purple ink—the kind of passionate scrawl that could only belong to the type of English teacher who wore flowing scarves and quoted William Wordsworth from memory:
“Promise me you’ll go to England one day. I think that’s where your story lives.”
Ms Jensen, Senior Lit
Eva’s throat tightened. She remembered Ms Jensen’s face when she’d told her she wasn’t going—the disappointment, yes, but something else too. Recognition. Like she’d seen this story before, watched other young women fold their dreams into neat squares and tuck them away. Maybe even her own.
Like she knew what it meant to set aside a dream.
A laugh escaped Eva’s lips, surprising her.
And then came the tears—not the careful, contained ones she’d mastered for office disappointments or the quiet ones she’d perfected in bathroom stalls.
These were torrential, body-shaking sobs that felt like they were coming from some long-sealed chamber inside her chest.
They weren’t tears of sadness. They were tears of recognition.
Of meeting a version of herself she’d almost forgotten existed.
The girl who’d stayed up until 3 a.m. writing stories about women who solved mysteries and crossed oceans and followed their hearts.
The girl who’d dreamed of a life beyond Nashville society expectations, who’d believed that words could build worlds.
The girl who had slowly disappeared beneath layers of sensible choices and careful compromises.
As her sobs subsided, Eva wiped her face with the back of her hand, not caring about her smeared mascara or puffy eyes. She looked down at the brochure again, at the promise of Gothic architecture and literary history and possibility.
She wasn’t going to Cancún. She wasn’t getting engaged.
But maybe, just maybe, she was finally going to start her story.
Eva’s laptop glowed blue in the dimness of her apartment, casting shadows across walls she’d painted an agreeable grey because the name seemed like good advice at the time. She pulled up the airline website, fingers hovering over the keyboard. Change destination. Not cancel. Change.
But to where?