Chapter 26
Anne
“You used to bring me fudge when you were a student,” Beverly Powell said as we stood in her kitchen. “Usually you were either hoping for forgiveness or looking for advice. Since you haven’t done anything wrong, I assume this lovely box of candy means you want…”
“Advice. Yes, please,” I said.
I’d forgotten (or had only recently realized?) there was a certain relief in being home. In being known.
She poured our tea into bone china mugs. “Well then, you better come sit down,” she said.
The condo she shared with Zoe was a mix of cottagecore roses and global prints, stacks of books and hand-thrown pots, a clash of colors and styles that somehow still worked, like the couple themselves. A purple yoga mat was rolled up in a corner. A laptop lay open on the coffee table.
“Sorry for interrupting,” I said.
“You’re fine. I’m just reviewing some lesson plans before school starts.”
I winced. “I should probably be doing the same.”
“Why aren’t you?”
I managed not to sputter my tea. “Well. I was thinking about what you said. About how Ravenscrest isn’t a good fit for me.”
She sipped her tea and waited, knowing from experience that this was the best way to get me to talk.
“The thing is, they don’t really want me.
I think they want to offer the job to my substitute,” I said.
Hearing Joe’s voice in my head. Anybody can be replaced.
“The principal actually boxed up my classroom library. I mean, he didn’t do it personally, but he’s censoring the materials I make available to my students, which goes against everything I believe in.
If I go back, I’m saying I’m okay with that. And I’m not. At all.”
“Then don’t go back. Move forward.”
“Quit, you mean?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“I don’t know what I want anymore,” I confessed miserably. “That’s my problem.”
Beverly pursed her lips. “Sometimes moving on means you need to walk away.”
“But I feel like I’m abandoning my students.”
“It’s hard, I know. We’re used to prepping our students to leave us, to go out into the world.
It’s not as easy when we’re the ones doing the leaving.
” She regarded me over the edge of her mug.
“You do know there’s a shortage of good teachers everywhere, especially since the pandemic.
Michigan and Illinois have reciprocity. You qualify for a temporary teaching certificate.
That would last you for a year, until you get a full-time license. ”
My mind whirled. To be closer to my mother…to Daanis…to Joe. But I didn’t let myself think about Joe. Stay in the moment.
“I’d need to find a job,” I said, testing the prospect out loud. It sounded…good. I felt a ripple of excitement. “I could look at Paradise, maybe. Or Beaver Island? Any of the small schools.”
“These little districts have their own special challenges. Even on Mackinac. It’s hard to find someone willing to live here year-round.
And because we’re short-staffed, we’re not only teaching multiple grades but juggling different roles, coaching or in the office.
It’s a lot.” She leaned forward to select a piece of fudge.
“If I didn’t feel I was leaving the school in the lurch, I would have retired a year ago.
I promised Zoe this would be my last year. ”
“I…Wow. I can’t imagine the school without you. I can’t imagine my life without you. I wouldn’t be a teacher if it weren’t for you.”
“I’m retiring, Anne, not dying. Zoe and I have always wanted to travel. But with our different schedules, there’s never been a good time.”
“Do I hear my name?” Zoe blew in the front door. “Hello, darling.” She kissed Beverly. “And Annie!” She swooped in for a hug before turning back to her wife. “Did you tell her about the job?”
“We hadn’t gotten there yet.”
“What job?” I asked.
Beverly set her mug carefully beside her laptop. “I mentioned we were short-staffed…”
“The school is looking for a substitute teacher,” Zoe said. “For this academic year!”
Beverly cleared her throat. “It’s not a full-time position. It wouldn’t have to be permanent. But it could certainly be an opportunity for you while you consider your options.”
I had options! Which meant…I had no idea what it meant. My brain exploded, my thoughts scattering like dandelion seeds in the wind.
I wasn’t the same person who had left the island, Joe said. But was I ready to come back?
I appealed to Beverly. “Do you think I should take it?”
She smiled. “Not for my sake.”
“Do it for me,” Zoe said.
I laughed. But a squiggle of doubt fluttered in my chest. I’d applied to Ravenscrest at least in part because of Chris, tailoring what I wanted to the life I thought we were building together.
Did I want to work on Mackinac?
“It’s your choice,” Beverly said. “You need to make the decision that’s right for you. But I would certainly encourage you to apply.”
—
I looked around my room, my refuge, where I’d read and dreamed and studied, scribbled in my diary and tried on sticky lip gloss with Daanis.
I hadn’t written my happy ending yet. I wasn’t even sure exactly what it looked like.
I’d imagined all these things holding me back.
But the only thing that could hold me back was me.
This room…It wasn’t who I was now.
I hugged a floppy yellow bear tight and popped him in the carton to be sent with the rest of my stuffed animals (most of them) to the women’s shelter in Petoskey.
Adulting the heck out of my childhood bedroom.
Repurposing my history to make other children happy, like building furniture from reclaimed wood.
A memory of Joe slammed into me.
“You just need to find the right material. The right project,” he’d said, his brown eyes focused, his brow creased in concentration, the words so perfect I wanted to cry.
I sniffed hard and kissed another stuffie goodbye, making room on my shelves and in my life. Out went the shriveled flower crown from my First Communion, the bowling pin from my fourth-grade birthday party, the stack of Mad Libs Daanis and I had completed years ago.
I plucked Joe’s shirt from the back of the chair and cradled it in my arms, but in this moment it had lost its power to comfort.
I was so mad at him. Mad and hurt. Because when I told him I wasn’t sure what to do, he’d tried to make the decision for me.
He’d made an assumption about my feelings and my future, just like Chris.
“Have a safe trip,” he’d said.
Jerk.
How could he be so right about me and also so wrong?
I heard the familiar pop of the front door and thought, gladly, Dad. And then heard, instead of the jingle of his keys in the bowl, my mother’s firm tread across the living room carpet. “Annie?”
Because Dad was never coming home again. Grief was a papercut, sharp and unexpected. “In here,” I called.
She appeared in the doorway, her gaze going from me to the bookshelves to the flannel shirt in my arms.
I balled it up and stuffed it in the closet. Out of sight, out of mind.
“You’re awfully busy all of a sudden,” she observed.
I flushed. I’d been home for months, entombed in a shrine to my past life. “There’s so much. I can’t believe it took me this long.”
“Sometimes it’s hard,” she said. “Letting go.”
“It’s just stuff,” I said deliberately, echoing the words she’d given me after Dad died.
Something moved across her face, recognition or grief, a ripple on the surface gone too quickly to be identified. She looked around. “We’re going to need more boxes.”
Together, we sorted and discarded, cleaned and put away, slowly letting go of the pieces of my childhood that didn’t serve me anymore.
I took a deep breath. “I talked to Beverly Powell yesterday. She suggested I get my teaching license here in Michigan and apply to be a substitute at the school.”
“Is that right,” my mother said.
Not making assumptions. Not offering advice. It was as if she didn’t care. But that was child Anne talking.
“I’m thinking about it,” I said.
“You’re a smart girl. You’ll figure it out.”
She used to say that all the time. Dismissing me, I’d thought, too busy with her own life to worry about my decisions. But now I saw her trust as a gift, empowering me to make my own choices.
“Either way, I quit my job. I emailed the school last night.” I watched her fold my old high school sweatshirt. “Are you disappointed?”
“Why would I be disappointed?”
“Because I’m twenty-five years old and moving back home?”
“Been quiet around here since your father died. Mostly quiet when he was here, come to that.” She stared into the middle distance.
“He wasn’t one for talking, your father, unless it was about you.
” She glanced quickly at me and away, but not before I saw the…
Were those tears in her eyes? “Been nice having you around.”
My heart squeezed. “You always encouraged me to leave.”
“I wanted you to be free to go. Because I never went.” She smiled wryly. “Guess I’ve always wondered what it would be like.”
It was a side of my mother I’d never even imagined. “It’s not too late. You’re only fifty-three.”
“Too old for a midlife crisis.”
“Unless you live to a hundred and six.”
“God help us,” Mom said.
But once the idea had seized me, I couldn’t let it go. “Beverly’s going to travel with Zoe once she retires.”
“I can’t get away. I’ve got the shop.”
My mind bubbled. “But now you have me to help you. I mean, I can’t make fudge yet, but…maybe I can learn? Joe’s mom says if you can read, you can follow a recipe.” I moved on hastily from the topic of Joe. “And I’m good with customers.”
“You are,” my mother agreed. “I should show you something.”
“Willy Wonka’s secret inventing room?”
My mother snorted.
—
I hadn’t gone into Dad’s workshop in weeks, reluctant to face the mess I’d made, the haphazard piles a painful reminder of everything in my life I’d left unfinished.
My mother unlocked the door and pushed it open.