Chapter Seventeen
It’s after ten by the time Maggie and Piper finally slip under the covers of their respective beds. Walking up to the room
from the tavern, she’d been exhausted. But the silence outside is so complete, it has the unexpected effect of making her
feel highly alert. Now she thinks she might need to listen to a podcast to get to sleep.
“Are you awake?” Piper says.
“Piper, of course. We just turned out the light.”
“If we were in middle school at a slumber party, this would be the time someone tells a ghost story.”
“Don’t remind me. I had to pick you up in the middle of the night from more than one of those things.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Oh yes, I did!” Maggie sits up, even more awake now. It’s like the old days when they lived together. Even on school nights,
sometimes they fell asleep in front of the living room television streaming Gilmore Girls.
She feels silly for begrudging their time apart earlier in the day. What does an hour, or a day, or even a month apart here
and there matter? Those times are temporary, whereas their fundamental, blood-deep mother-daughter connection is forever.
“Okay, so no ghost stories,” Piper says.
“How ’bout a little harmless gossip?” She launches into what Kalli Dimitriou told her, some drama about a soon-to-be ex-husband and a former lover she can’t get over.
It all sounds very messy and complicated, and Maggie is thankful her own personal life is simple.
Frankly, hearing Kalli’s story, she can’t imagine being so consumed by any man.
She wonders if she’s even capable of experiencing enduring romantic love.
She always told herself things might have been different if she hadn’t been a single mother in her twenties.
But maybe she never would have met The One, regardless.
Maybe for some people, that simply doesn’t exist. She tells herself she’s fine with that.
“I saw you talking to Belinda for a while,” Piper says. “What’s her deal?”
“She and Max used to live in Philadelphia,” Maggie says.
“I thought they’d had this inn forever.”
“No, just twenty years.”
“That’s what I mean.”
Maggie smiles to herself. A twentysomething thinks twenty years is forever. But as a woman in her forties, she’s already experiencing the phenomenon of life chapters. She can already identify
two of her own: BP and AP—Before Piper and After Piper. She’d never really thought much beyond those two, because there’s
no after After Piper. She’s always going to be a mother. Except she’s starting to realize motherhood looks a little different from
the other side of forty. Again, the fear creeps in, and she pushes it away.
A stripe of moonlight comes through the gap between the window curtain and the wall. Maggie gets out of bed to pull them more
tightly closed. Their room overlooks the front of the inn, and she sees a few guys from the bachelor party clustered together,
bundled up in jackets. She can’t tell if they’re coming or going, but she notes Aidan Danby isn’t among them.
She still hasn’t told Piper about the bet with Aidan, the little competition tomorrow, but she should.
She feels her way carefully along the unfamiliar space back to her bed thinking how to explain the conversation with Aidan without it sounding ridiculous—not an easy task.
But before she can bring it up, Piper says, “Mom, thanks for this weekend. I really needed something to help me clear my head.”
Maggie feels a swell of happiness. “It’s my pleasure. Last week was rough, but we’ll tackle this temporary professional bump
in the road together.”
“I’m not thinking about work,” Piper says, her tone incredulous.
Maggie is confused. “Oh. I thought when you said ‘clear your head’ . . . So what’s bothering you?”
There’s silence for what feels like a full minute, then Piper says, “I think something’s going on with Ethan.”
Maggie sits up. “What do you mean?”
She hears the squeak of Piper’s bed as she sits up as well.
“Well, during the summer we had lots of conversations about the future—our future. But lately, we don’t. So I wonder if he’s
changed his mind.”
“About what?”
“About me. About us.”
“He’s hasn’t,” Maggie says firmly. “I’m sure of it.”
But she can tell by Piper’s silence that she’s not convinced. Well, she’s just going to have to take her word for it. She
can’t very well tell her that Ethan is thinking about proposing. For one thing, it would spoil the surprise. And for another:
Maggie discouraged him.
Wait—she hadn’t discouraged him from proposing. She’d encouraged him not to rush. To wait for a better time for Piper.
“Piper, I know he loves you,” Maggie says carefully.
“But maybe right now you should just enjoy what you two have together and focus on your career. That’s what this stage of life is all about.
When the time is right, I’m sure those conversations about the future will pick up right where they left off. ”
Piper lets out a sigh. Maggie’s eyes have adjusted to the dark, and she can make out faintly that Piper is propped up on one
elbow.
“What does that mean, when the time is right?” Piper says, her voice pinched. “Life is only going to get busier, get more
complicated. People who blame timing are just making excuses. It was like, our relationship had this forward momentum, and
then it stopped.”
“Is it possible you’re imagining that?”
“I found a ring,” Piper blurts out. “A diamond ring.”
Maggie’s heart starts to beat faster. If she’d known this before Ethan spoke to her last week, she might have said something
different. But it’s too late now.
“When?” she asks, trying to sound nonchalant.
“A month ago. Thirty-two days ago, to be exact. But then when I checked before leaving last night, it was gone. And it’s not
like we have a trip coming up or anything where it’s like oh, obviously he’s waiting for that. And sure, he could have moved
it somewhere else. But why would he? No, I feel there’s a disconnect.”
Maggie is panicked.
She and Piper do not lie to one another. They’ve had it pretty easy as far as mother-daughter relationships go. She’d been
warned by countless articles and books about the Terrible Twos, and then it was watch out for middle school, and then the common knowledge that her daughter would hate her throughout high school as she established her own identity.
But none of those things happened. And Maggie felt not just lucky, but a little smug. She and Piper are different.
“Piper, again, I think maybe he’s waiting for the right time. And I give him credit for that. You have other priorities right now.”
Piper doesn’t say anything.
Maggie, her eyes wide open, is thankful for the darkness.
There’s only one way to fix this: She’s going to have to tell Ethan to disregard what she said about the timing. She’ll tell
him she was wrong, that if he thinks this is what Piper would want, then he should act accordingly. But for now, she just
wants to end the conversation.
“Piper, try to get some sleep.”
“Okay. I will. Thanks for listening,” Piper says. “You’re the only one I can talk to about this.”
Maggie swallows hard. The joy she experiences from the compliment is tempered by a fresh wave of guilt. As soon as they’re
back in the city, she’ll talk to Ethan.
Until then, she’ll make sure she and Piper have so much fun this weekend, neither one of them gives it another thought.
Belinda had an epiphany earlier that night. An unwelcome one.
It happened somewhere between the braised lamb shank and the chocolate custard with blueberry-lavender compote: She heard
herself telling the story of how she and Max fell in love with this historic place—not just the inn, but also the town—and
realized it was home. Until that moment, it had somehow still felt temporary, an experiment, a phase. But now that they were
leaving, she realized it was the longest she’d ever lived in one place since childhood. No wonder she doesn’t want to leave.
After dinner, she convinced herself the nostalgia was because of the wine. But as she settles into bed next to Max, she understands
that it wasn’t the wine. This was her first retreat since agreeing to explore a sale. And it’s giving her second thoughts.
Their living quarters are two guest rooms combined into one suite with a full kitchen, a living area, and a bedroom.
Briefly, years ago, Max had converted the living room into a second bedroom because Belinda hit perimenopause and needed the room to be so cold at night, Max couldn’t sleep.
Separate bedrooms seemed to be a logical solution, until Max came storming into hers one day and announced, “Do you know we spend the equivalent of twenty-five years of our lives asleep? I refuse to spend that much time apart.” From that night on, they negotiated a compromised sleep climate.
Really, so much of their lives together in New Hope had been a compromise. Moving there in the first place. After spending
the first decade of their marriage in center city Philadelphia, she agreed to the experiment in small-town living, certain
Max would get it out of his system and they’d be back downtown in time for the next SEPTA strike.
But then he discovered the inn for sale. It wasn’t something they’d planned, but it had fallen into place so easily. Like
it was meant to be.
Beside her in bed, Max is reading The Philadelphia Inquirer. As a former reporter for the newspaper, he still insists on getting the print edition, and she also likes having physical
copies around. If it wasn’t for the Inquirer, they never would have met. Max was covering the local beat and was assigned to do a piece on South Street businesses. She’d
recently opened her knitting shop, South Street Knits, and he interviewed her. When the piece published, Max hand-delivered
a few copies to the shop and asked her out to dinner. The rest, as they say, is history.
“How’s everyone getting along down there?” he says, turning the page absently.