Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
“Cadence Meadows, what the heck are you doing up there?”
Eleanor’s voice startled Cadence where she was standing on top of her desk in the gallery.
This was… an admittedly sort of bonkers part of Cadence’s process.
She’d gotten the art put in the order she wanted it for her re-arrangement project, or at least had gotten to the point where she was pretty sure it was the way she wanted it.
But she couldn’t be certain until she saw it from the angle where she would see it if she were on the floor and it were on the walls.
Since hanging it and un-hanging it wasn’t really practical…
she’d come up with this. She stood above it, tilted her head just so, and voila.
It was almost as good as hanging it all up again.
She did look a bit strange standing on her desk though, she could admit that.
“Getting perspective,” she told Eleanor, hoping this sounded cool and artsy and not like she was a nut on a table.
Eleanor looked duly impressed.
“Did you get the perspective you wanted?”
Cadence wobbled her hand in a so-so gesture before carefully getting herself down from the desk.
“I have the art right, but not the rest of it.”
“The rest?” Eleanor asked.
“Well, that stuff, over there?” She jerked a thumb over to what she was thinking of as the why won’t this stuff just work pile. “It just… doesn’t feel right anymore.”
“You’re sounding a whole lot like an artist, right now,” Eleanor teased gently. “Needing perspective, things not feeling right. I’d buy art from you, you sound like you know your stuff.”
“Oh, well, thank you,” Cadence said.
“You’re very welcome,” Eleanor said, but something in her tone seemed distant, and now that Cadence was closer, her friend did seem a bit distracted…
“Everything okay, El?” she asked, pushing aside her own worries for the moment.
“Oh, yeah,” her friend said, not entirely convincingly. “Tell me more about these plans.”
Cadence decided to loop back around. Eleanor clearly wasn’t ready to talk just yet.
Unfortunately, her own mental space wasn’t much of a mood-lifter.
Maybe sharing would help though.
“I just remember the days where organizing the gallery felt like less of a chore and more of an… adventure,” she said.
The thing she didn’t add was that the difference between those days and now was that, back then, she’d had Tyler helping her.
Even after Izzy was born, they would work together all day after dropping their daughter off with her doting grandparents.
It had felt almost like a holiday. Tyler and Cadence would get some much needed ‘them’ time, and Izzy would have some grandparent time.
But now…
Now, Cadence had to do it all alone.
The thought struck her like a blow to the chest. Would her heart ever stop aching when she thought about the state of her marriage? Whether she even had a marriage anymore?
“Maybe I’m not as young as I used to be,” she said, trying to cover up how deeply her pain went. “All this hauling stuff around…”
“Honey,” Eleanor said sympathetically when Cadence trailed off. This tiny bit of kindness was enough to cause tears to spring to Cadence’s eyes.
“It’s just so tough,” she said. “I look at you, and I think about how you’ve made things so amazing for yourself since your divorce, and then I look at myself—”
“No, no, honey, no,” Eleanor said, looping an arm around Cadence’s shoulders and giving her a warm, sideways hug. “Comparison is the thief of joy. Our situations might have some overlap, but they’re different. Your pain is your pain. Don’t give yourself a hard time for feeling it.”
Cadence buried her face in her hands. “Oh, El,” she said, her voice damp and wavering.
“Don’t cry,” Eleanor said. “If you cry, I’m going to cry… nope. Too late.”
Cadence leaned her head against Eleanor’s. “I’m a mess.”
She felt Eleanor’s sigh. “Oh, sister, I’m right there with you. We’re messes.”
Cadence stepped out of the other woman’s hold. “Okay, spill,” she demanded. “You can’t get away with ‘it’s all fine’ any longer.”
Eleanor rolled her eyes, but she already seemed a little lighter.
“It just these darn permits!” she said, voice spilling over with frustration.
“They make me feel bonkers! And then I feel bonkers for feeling bonkers, because it’s just paperwork.
So I tell myself, ‘Eleanor, just start working through it,’ and then I try to start and I get so overwhelmed! ”
Cadence found it was her turn to offer reassurances.
“Paperwork is just paperwork,” she said.
“But is also something that can make you want to pull out your hair. It’s always more confusing than it needs to be, and each form has its own weird name and purpose.
So, if you’re feeling bad about feeling frustrated, you should not.
Because I know I feel that frustration all the time.
Diana does too. Goodness knows we’ve complained about it often enough.
So next time you’re thinking bad things about yourself for feeling any dread, imagine you’re saying it to us, instead.
I promise you’ll end up being a lot kinder, a lot more generous. ”
“That’s really good advice,” Eleanor said with a small smile. “Are you a mom or something?”
“You know what? I totally am.” Both women laughed.
Eleanor sighed in a way that sounded like she was unburdening herself. “Maybe it is just a matter of being kinder to myself, but I am facing just a touch of self-doubt recently. Like maybe I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.”
“Oh, I am facing more than a touch of self-doubt,” Cadence admitted. “The idea of facing my future on my own? It’s terrifying. And it’s…”
“Sad,” Eleanor supplied. “You’re grieving.”
“I mean, he didn’t die—”
Eleanor shook her head, cutting off Cadence’s words. “No, a person didn’t die, but the vision you had for your future? That is something you lost. The feelings you’re going to have around that are going to be complex. And that’s okay. Give yourself some generosity. Be lenient with yourself.”
“Man, you are good at this advice thing,” Cadence said. “Ugh, is leaning on my friends the thing to do?”
“You know,” Eleanor said, “I kind of think it is.”
“So annoying when the answer is right in front of you,” Cadence joked.
“So annoying,” Eleanor agreed. Then she clapped her hands together. “Okay. Pep talk time. Cadence Meadows, you are a tough, competent woman, and you are getting knocked on your butt right now, but you’re going to get back up again. And it’s okay to feel your bruises from getting knocked down.”
“Yes,” Cadence agreed. “Good advice. Okay, now you. You are starting a new business, and that is hard! I took over the gallery when it was already established, and that was hard! But you’ve got me, and you’ve got Diana, and…
well, saying you have Miriam is more of a threat than anything else, but you’ve got her too.
” They both chuckled. “And yeah, you’ll get through the paperwork. One step at a time.”
“We can do it,” Eleanor said, her tone almost cautious.
“We can do it,” Cadence agreed, a little more boldly.
“We can do it!” Eleanor said with more vigor.
“Even when it feels like nothing is going right,” Cadence said. She sighed the words, but she was smiling too. Confiding in Eleanor hadn’t fixed everything, but it had certainly helped.
“One thing at a time,” Eleanor reminded her gently. “You’re doing that field trip with Isabelle’s class, right? That’s something that’s going to go great. It’s going to be a memory that Izzy is going to hold on to forever. You’re doing great. You’re a great mom.”
Her words brought more tears to Cadence’s eyes. She didn’t try to hide them. After all, she was going to keep her new resolution to lean on her friends… and to carry their kindness with her.