Chapter 43
Vic had decided to try her hand at oils and was prepping assorted canvases accordingly.
She’d sized them before going for a walk with Cal the night before, and now she was applying coats of gesso.
Or that’s what Angel insisted she was doing.
Devil knew better. Knew she was pretending not to be the kind of woman who was always, at least in part, obsessing about some man.
Just like Devil also knew she was impatiently clock-watching, wanting evening to come because it was the night of The Second Chance Shop’s staff party—and not wanting it because she wanted to see her friends, or not just because of that.
A huge part of the impatience was because she wanted to talk about Cal.
She wished Madeline had reopened the shop on the second of January, the way Cal had.
This extra week off felt like too much time on her hands, with Cal back to work already.
Plus, she had so many things she wanted to blab Gwen and Madeline’s ears off about.
What the heck was Cal thinking, asking her to come work for him, to be his employee? And to rent his sister’s house?
She shook her head as she paced her studio, the final coats of gesso drying.
She didn’t want the job Cal offered in any way, shape, or form.
She loved working for Madeline—but even if she didn’t have the job at The Second Chance Shop, she wouldn’t have wanted to work with Cal full-time.
It was too close, wouldn’t give either of them enough space.
And yet . . . yet she was tempted to say yes to Cal’s job offer only because he so clearly wanted her to.
It was very eye-opening about herself. That was how pathetic she was.
How much of a pleaser she was. She’d consider accepting a job she didn’t want just to avoid saying no.
And on that note . . . ditto regarding the offer to rent Carrie’s home.
It’s true, she had told Cal she wanted her own place—but she’d since rethought that.
There was something wrong with Audra, and she couldn’t, in good conscience, move out right now.
Okay, so . . . good. She knew what she didn’t want. She recognized the desire to say yes as what it was . . . pathology, hahaahahahahahaha—but seriously. Now she just had to figure out how to tell Cal.
Thanks for the offer. I’m flattered, but I’m happy where I’m at.
Sheesh, when Angel said it sounded so simple.
He’ll probably be angry or hurt, Devil warned.
That was, of course, very possible. She turned to her mind, as she so often did, to the helpful chart she’d now memorized. Things I can control: Boundaries I set with others and where I give my time, energy, and attention. Things I can’t control: How others feel and how others react.
Barf, said Devil.
She laughed at the thought. It was a little barfy—and that was okay. It was helpful-barfy.
She skipped downstairs to the kitchen where her phone had better reception and gave Cal a quick call. Getting his voicemail, she almost chickened out but then decided it was actually a gift.
“Hey, Cal. It’s me. Thanks for thinking of me regarding the job and potentially renting Carrie’s house, but I’m happy where I’m at—at the shop and house-wise.”
She paused, even though she knew the gap might sound weird in the message, but successfully refrained from adding an explanation or trying to justify her decision. Bonus points!
She ended the message with a very warm “I can’t wait to see you again” kind of comment. That felt right too.
And now, it was finally time to get ready for the staff party, and here she was, no longer keyed up and overly eager to go.
She was still excited to see Madeline and Gwen, but not desperate.
She couldn’t wait to chat about everything with them but wasn’t paralyzed by the need for advice on something she already knew for herself.
Maybe it was silly, but she pulled out all the stops for Madeline and Gwen with her outfit—in a fun, almost silly over-the-top way.
Did her hair in 90s-style curls—big and fluffy, slightly frizzy, à la Julia Roberts.
Slid into the vintage 90s dress she’d scooped from a bag of clothes donated to the shop—as commanded by Madeline.
Finished off the outfit with kitten-heel mules from the same donation.
“Ohmigoodnesss—that bow!” Madeline said when Vic slipped off her coat in Madeline’s tiny, perfect house.
Vic looked down at her chest, which was all ivory satin bow, topping off a sleek, knee-length pencil dress. “So great, right?”
“I love that you’re wearing vintage 90s. It’s so awesome,” Gwen exclaimed. “It’s like something you wore to one of our school dances back in the day.”
“Yeah,” Vic agreed—then groaned. “But aiyiyi—90s stuff is vintage. How did that happen?”
Madeline laughed. “Right? It’s brutal.”
The “staff” party ended up being like no other work event Vic had ever attended.
It was really just . . . a night with increasingly dear friends.
They ate good food, drank good wine—and chatted their faces off.
Vic didn’t know if it was the wine or the fact that she’d hung out with Madeline and Gwen enough now to feel at ease, but she found herself comfortably confessing all sorts of details of her life that she would’ve normally held back.
In fact, she covered her three biggest concerns going into this new year: Her decision to take Madeline and Gwen’s advice to date Cal and not wait until some imaginary time when she was all fixed and not a broken mess.
Her worries about Audra. And the happy-making news that Michael had reached out.
She still hadn’t received the promised email—and she checked her inbox at least once an hour—but she trusted it was coming.
Madeline and Gwen applauded her choice to date Cal—as in they literally clapped, and then Gwen wooted like they were on a sports field and someone had made a particularly smooth move.
They expressed concern about Audra, and Gwen was adamant that Vic not let Audra put off a doctor’s visit any longer. She shared how she and her sister had worried that their dad had dementia, but it turned out to be dehydration.
“Personality changes in people as they age can be signs of serious things,” she warned gently. Then she added, equally gently. “Of course, it is sometimes difficult to identify what’s actually a change and what’s just a deeper extension of who they’ve always been.”
Vic immediately flashed back to an incident Gwen had witnessed when they were teenagers, where Audra showed up at school and literally screamed at her in the parking lot and called her all sorts of degrading names because she hadn’t dried the dishes properly.
At this moment, however, instead of shame, embarrassment, or self-consciousness, Vic just felt seen.
And, for maybe the first time in her life, she didn’t have any conflicting compulsion to try to shield or protect Audra.
Gwen’s words felt like an observation, not a judgment.
And, of course, both women expressed delight that Michael had promised to write a real letter soon.
“He will,” Madeline said. “For sure. Christmas time is just so busy.”
Vic smiled at her kind friend.
Possibly the best part of the evening, however, wasn’t that she got to share and unpack with them—but that they did the same with her.
Gwen shared tender things about her grandkids, her hopes and fears for them, and her broken-hearted rage (so hard for Vic to imagine Gwen anything but calm and in control) at her daughter Lily.
“I know anger is often sadness and vice-versa,” Gwen added, “but these days anger is winning.”
“Aw, Gwen,” Madeline said. “There’s no right or wrong way to feel in this type of thing. It’s all just hard. Your deep feelings just show how much you care for Pillar, Zach, and Zena and Lily.”
While Vic knew from previous conversations that Gwen was raising her grandkids, she hadn’t known until now that it was because their mom, Gwen’s middle child, Lily, struggled with opioids.
Noticing Gwen’s eyes were filled with unshed tears, she reached out and squeezed Gwen’s hand and wished she had words of so-called wisdom that would help or give comfort.
Then again, Gwen was probably an expert on “opioid use disorder,” as she called it.
She didn’t need advice, but Vic wanted to at least try to return some of the same sort of support these two women had given her so much of.
“It is so hard,” she said, echoing Madeline.
“All compulsive behaviors are. Even when a person desperately wants to stop, or when whatever they’re doing or using is destroying them and they feel so guilty, they sometimes just can’t help themselves—or can’t yet.
You do need to protect your grandkids—and you can be furious with Lily and still love her, still mourn for her, still hold hope that she’ll turn things around.
And she might, you know. People do.” May it be so, she thought. “Dum spiro spero and all that.”
Gwen squeezed Vic’s hand back. “While I breathe, I hope. What a crazy coincidence. I love that Latin quote.”
“It’s gotten me through a lot,” Vic said, “but I hope you don’t think I’m being preachy or anything.”
“Not at all,” Gwen said. “It’s good to be reminded. Thank you.”
Madeline refreshed each of their glasses of wine. “It’s so hard to know what to say when people are going through hard times, even when you’re close.”
“Yeah,” Gwen agreed. “Maybe it’s even tougher when you really care about the person because the last thing you want to do is make it worse for them or hurt them unintentionally.”
“And you want them to still like you,” Vic blurted, then was immediately horrified. The wine, good food, and chat had definitely loosened her tongue. She didn’t want to show her needy side.
But Madeline and Gwen raised their glasses in a toast. “Exactly,” Madeline said.
“Connection,” Gwen agreed again. “The biggest human need.”