Chapter 19
It’s past midnight when Alice finds me on the porch swing in my pajamas, staring up at the night sky—clear but freckled with stars.
She holds two mugs of tea.
“Chamomile,” she says, handing me a mug. “To help you sleep.”
Since it’s early June, the temperature at night has dipped to the sixties, so I eagerly take the warm mug in my hands. “How did you know I was out here?” I ask.
She shrugs, as if to say she just knew.
I sip the tea. It’s so smooth, and naturally sweet, with hints of apple and honey. “This is chamomile?” I take another sip. “It tastes different.”
“It’s from my garden. I dry my own flowers and herbs for tea.”
No wonder it tastes so good.
“You leave in two days,” she says after a beat.
“Yeah.”
“But you don’t want to.”
I shrug. “It doesn’t matter what I want. I have to, Alice. I have a job. A home. Responsibilities. That’s what happens at the end of a vacation. You always wish you could stay longer, wish you had booked a few more days at the hotel. But you have to go back. You can’t stay forever.”
Alice sips her tea and nods. “Maggie, no one is asking you to stay here forever.”
“But Brady asked me to help him run his baking camp. Be his assistant. Be his new Allen. For the duration of the camp.”
“And you said no?”
I shake my head as if to say I didn’t have a choice.
“I have to go back to work on Monday,” I argue.
“But what if you didn’t?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, is it possible you don’t have to go back to work on Monday? What would happen if you didn’t?”
I snicker. “I’d get fired?”
“They can’t fire you for needing time off.”
“But I don’t need time off.”
She raises her eyebrows. “You don’t?”
I sigh. “I can’t permanently be on vacation.
I have to go back to work. I’m hoping to get a promotion at the end of summer, and Hannah starts first grade in the fall.
Our life is there.” I hear how defensive I sound but can’t stop.
“I can’t not go back to work because I’m enjoying living here at your farm, and these wonderful people, and this food, and this land, and how it all makes me feel alive inside for the first time in a very long time. ”
Alice laughs. “Alive for the first time in a very long time? Gee, that sounds like a horrible reason to stay.”
Her sarcasm is thick. Though she does have a point. I smile. “Am I having an amazing time? Yes. Do I love it here? Yes. Does my daughter love it here? Yes. Do I feel a real sense of purpose and connection here? Yes. Did I meet someone I could just maybe fall in love with?”
I pause, remembering Brady’s kiss earlier on the porch. I can still feel the weight of his lips on mine, even now. I feel a twinge of guilt. I hadn’t allowed myself to think about someone in this way since Sean. But I know he’d want me to be happy, for Hannah to be happy too.
“Yes,” I finally say.
“But?”
“But,” I repeat. “I don’t have the luxury of time or freedom to follow my dreams. I’m a single mother, who has to put my daughter first and foremost over my own happiness.”
“You don’t have the luxury of being happy?”
“Not when my daughter’s livelihood is at stake. She needs stability.”
“But Hannah is happier here,” Alice argues.
“You said it yourself. She’s not even asking for her iPad or to watch TV.
She’s playing outside, catching fish and fireflies, reading, getting her hands dirty.
When you talk about her livelihood, there’s more to that than whether her mother has a high-paying job. ”
She’s right. I think of Hannah, the smile that’s been plastered on her face since we got here. Her eagerness to help—pick flowers, cook with the Scandi Trio. She’s come alive here too.
What happens to her when we go back to real life?
“Look, Maggie, this is your choice,” Alice says.
“But I urge you to stop seeing this in black and white. Open your mind and heart to some gray. No one is asking you to permanently move here. But why not stay longer? Why not stay for the duration of the baking camp? Be Brady’s sous-chef.
I just don’t think you’re asking Why not? ”
Why not? Because I’m afraid of what happens if I stay any longer. How happy will I be? How fulfilled? How attached will Hannah get? And what if we get hurt? What if all this gets taken away from us again in a heartbeat?
Isn’t it easier not to find out?
“You know, I was engaged once,” Alice says.
I turn toward her, tucking one leg under me. I’d been wondering about her love life, or lack thereof. “You were?”
“To Richard. My college sweetheart.”
I lean in. “What happened?”
She looks off into the night sky. “Well, he asked me to marry him at our graduation, and I said yes. We were going to move to New York City. He had a great job lined up in advertising. I was a home economics major—an already dying field, with the women’s lib movement—but I had several job opportunities in the test-kitchen field.
Around that same time, Rose died and left me this house.
And like I told you earlier, once I came here, I didn’t want to leave.
Richard and I did long distance for a good year.
It was hard. He expected me to sell this place and move to New York so we could finally get married.
But I just couldn’t leave. I didn’t have to go all the way to New York to realize this was where I belong.
This life, here on this farm, is what I wanted.
I felt so connected to St. John’s Ferry.
It felt wrong to leave, with my grandmother and grandfather buried just miles away.
I asked Richard to come here, but he didn’t want a small-town life.
He wanted adventure, what New York could offer.
We wanted different things at that point. And it ended.”
I touch her arm. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, please, that was so long ago.”
I think of Lenny, how fond he seemed to be of Alice. “And you never met anyone else?”
She shakes her head. “A date here and there. Nothing of substance. Living in a small town doesn’t help.
Any available bachelor felt like a distant cousin.
And then, I just got to a point where I felt content, figured why bother getting entangled with someone now?
But you still have so much love to give, Maggie. ”
I sigh. “But I just don’t know how it could work.”
“You know, there was a point to my Richard story,” she goes on. “But I’m not sure I did a good job making it.”
“I thought it was to prove that walking away is sometimes the best choice?”
“Now I know for sure I didn’t do a good job.
” She shakes her head. “My point was that you need to do what you truly want, what you feel deep inside, not what you think you should do.” She taps her head with her index finger to make her point.
“It made more sense for me to move to New York, to marry Richard, to sell the farm. On paper, it looked like the best life for me. But it’s not what I wanted.
It’s not what that little voice inside of me told me to do, knew was right for me.
My point was that often, the best choice is not always the logical one. ”
I look Alice in the eye. “So you’re saying . . . listen to my heart?”
“Exactly.” She pats me on the shoulder like a teacher encouraging a student. “Look, I just want what’s best for you. So I’m asking you to consider how you could stay longer. Does the museum really need you in person come Monday? Could you use more of your vacation time? Could you work from here?”
I think about my usual obligations at the museum during the summer.
Most of it is desk work. Emails, phone calls, video calls, documents.
Summer interns usually take the physically demanding work, like acquisitions and archiving, which I could oversee remotely.
It is possible for me to do my job from here, especially now that there’s internet on the farm.
“I’ll think about it,” I say.
“Good. That’s all I wanted.” She pats my knee and stands. “Now go to sleep,” she adds brusquely, before heading back inside.
I linger on the porch after she leaves, continue looking at the star-studded sky.
But I sense Alice’s absence, like a child who accidentally let go of a balloon.
I imagine how the conversation would have gone had I been speaking with my mother.
Practical and sensible, she never would have encouraged me to stay any longer than necessary, or even consider the possibility.
To her, what matters is money, and titles, and awards, and moving up in the world.
Looking successful to others, exceeding society’s standards.
But happiness? Real fulfillment? Being your true self, even when the world tells you to be someone else?
These are not my mother’s values.
And this is the gift I have in Alice, a woman who feels maternal toward me, but who also wants me to be me, not the version of me that serves her.
My whole life I’ve craved a mentor. I’ve looked for that mentor in my boyfriends and friends, in my college professors, my boss.
Someone who would stand beside me, hold my hand, whisper guidance in my ear, but also trust me to step boldly in the direction of my dreams. I’ve been here less than a week, and Alice has already played that role too many times to count.
Why not? I hear Alice ask again.
Why not? I ask myself.
I swing on the porch and repeat the words, hoping they’ll become my own.
Friday morning comes too quickly.
It’s quiet when I come downstairs. I start a pot of coffee and unload the dishwasher while it brews.
I’m surprised by how comfortable I feel in Alice’s kitchen after such a short time.
How quickly humans adapt to a new normal.
I try to picture my kitchen back in Eastridge, but the image is rudimentary, details missing.
It feels like I’ve cooked more in Alice’s kitchen than I ever did back home, though I know that can’t possibly be true.
I start thinking about the morning ahead.
Brady’s students will arrive at ten to tour their new kitchen facility and set up—the pantry, their stations, their aprons, everything they need for classes to fully resume next week.
Since Alice and I planned to welcome them with a coffee bar and a hearty late-morning brunch—egg, fennel sausage, and white-cheddar biscuit sandwiches—I decide to throw together an oatmeal bake to tide the rest of us over until then.
Oatmeal, often mundane and mushy, transforms into something gourmet when baked in a 9 × 13 and flavored with maple syrup, vanilla, apples, and nuts.
By 7:30 am, everyone is up for the day—Brady fully showered and dressed, Hannah and the Scandi Trio still in pajamas.
We enjoy the oatmeal bake and discuss the day’s plan.
I try to pretend everything is okay, that my mind and heart are not at war.
The kiss last night has built a wall of tension between Brady and me.
We avoid each other’s gaze. It feels wrong.
Just when we were getting close, the truth of me leaving has introduced a lethal reality into our fantasy relationship.
After breakfast, we’re left alone in the kitchen, and the silence is so awkward, I can’t take it. I stand at the sink washing dishes while he sits at the table finishing his coffee.
“I’m going to try to finish the application for the National Register of Historic Places later today,” I say, my back to him.
I glance in his direction, but Brady doesn’t look at me. He’s staring into his coffee. He shrugs. “That’s important. Do what you have to do,” he says.
I try to engage him in conversation again. “How are things looking for today’s class?” I ask. “Anything else I can help prep? I know your hand is still bandaged. It can’t be easy.”
He brings his empty coffee mug to the counter and sets it down with a thud.
“I’ve got it,” he says.
“Okay,” I say back.
Silence.
He’s about to walk out of the room. “Brady?” I call after him.
He turns and leans on the door frame. “Yeah?”
“Don’t be angry at me.”
He sighs. “I’m not angry.”
“It feels like you are. You’re not really talking to me.”
He shrugs. “I just don’t know what else to say.”
“I took a week off work, not a month,” I say. “How can you be upset with me for having to go back to work?”
“It’s not work, Maggie. I get that. It’s . . . us. This. It seems like you don’t even want to try. I think this could work, you and me. Actually, I know it can. Because I’ve never had this kind of connection with someone. But you’re afraid to let me in.”
I feel heat rise in my throat. “I’m not afraid.”
He doesn’t say it, but his expression speaks volumes: Bullshit.
“I’m not,” I argue again. “It just doesn’t make sense. Why start something we can’t keep going? How is this going to work?”
“I don’t know,” Brady exclaims, throwing his arms into the air. “But haven’t you heard of something called faith? Trust? When something feels right—and this does, you and me; it’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced—you just follow it and figure it out.”
Once upon a time, I might have felt that way.
But now, five years after losing Sean, after raising Hannah on my own, it seems childish and irresponsible.
Sean was all about math, logic, absolutes, black and white.
And I loved all the gray. We evened each other out that way.
But after he passed, I became more like him.
I had to. But maybe it was also a way of handling my grief, taking on some of his attributes.
Now, I don’t know how to let go of the black and white, embrace the gray.
Brady and I stand silent, staring at each other, the space between us growing indefinitely.
He purses his lips. “You don’t think I’m scared? But I’m willing to take that chance, even though I know you have the potential to shatter my heart into a million little pieces.”
I realize how much I don’t know about Brady’s past. I know he’s never been married, and his mother was nudging him about having children, but has he ever been in love? Or has he been in love too many times to count?
Tears fill my eyes. I am afraid. I’m afraid to fall in love again because I’m afraid my heart will be broken again, even worse.
I loved Sean. He was my husband, the father of my child.
But I had to work at that relationship. What I feel with Brady after only a short time—the way it feels so effortless, so natural, not like work at all—is scary.
This could be the greatest love story of my life, and I’m too chicken to turn the next page.
“I just don’t know how you can walk away from this,” he says.
When I don’t say anything, Brady shakes his head as if ridding himself of me.
And then he’s gone.