Chapter 10 #2
"I'll book a flight tonight." A pause, and I could hear the smile in his voice. "I'm proud of you, Jess. Whatever you decide — I'm so proud of you."
"Thank you." I meant it more than the two words could carry. "I'll see you Friday."
"Friday," he confirmed. "Now go make your calls. You have people waiting to hear from you."
I laughed. "You know me too well."
"Getting there," he said. "Go."
I sat with that for a moment after he hung up, then picked up my phone again.
I called Anne next.
"Okay," she said, when I'd walked her through the pros/cons list. "The school question I can actually answer.
There's an elementary school four blocks from us in Clayton that Finn is going to in the fall.
It's excellent — small classes, strong arts program, the kind of place where the teachers actually know the kids' names by the second week.
I've already looked into it for completely hypothetical reasons that have nothing to do with hoping you move here. "
"Completely hypothetical."
"Entirely." She paused. "The relocation team is real, by the way — I know two people at Barnett and they both used Sarah when they moved from out of state. She's very good. She'll find you a neighborhood, a pediatrician, a grocery store you'll actually like. You won't be doing this alone."
I looked at my list. The cons column was shorter than the pros column, and getting shorter as Anne talked.
"I haven't decided anything," I said.
"I know."
"I'm still thinking."
"I know that too." Anne's voice softened. "For what it's worth — and I know I'm biased, because I want you here and I'm not pretending otherwise — I think you've already decided. I think you've known since Dr. Howe said the words teaching hospital and you leaned forward in your chair."
I didn't answer that.
"How did you know?" I asked instead. "When you decided to move to St. Louis. How did you know it was right?"
Anne was quiet for a second. "Honestly? My situation and yours aren't the same, so be careful comparing them.
For me, Liam was here, and he was Finn's father.
After everything — after all those years I kept Finn from him, carrying that guilt around like a second job — I couldn't not try to give the three of us a real shot at being a family in the same place.
I'd loved that man for years, Jess. Being apart from him wasn't noble. It was just lonely."
"So it was Liam."
"It was Liam and Finn. But it wasn't only that.
" She paused. "Here's the part that actually made it simple: I found out I could keep doing my career here without losing a single step.
Same work, same level, no compromise. And once I knew love and career were pointing at the exact same city — honestly, there was nothing left to agonize over.
The two things that matter most to me made the decision for me. "
I sat with that after we hung up, looking at my list, at the brownstone outside the kitchen window, at the familiar afternoon light doing what it always did at this time of day.
I called my mother next.
My mother, Catherine Calloway, had a gift for seeing straight to the thing I was trying not to say.
She and my father had been married for thirty-eight years, raised three children in a house in Kansas City full of noise and dinner table arguments and the kind of steady, uncomplicated love that I'd grown up taking for granted and only understood the rarity of later.
She'd gone back to work as a school administrator when my youngest sibling started kindergarten, and she'd never once apologized for wanting both — the family and the career — which was probably where I'd gotten the idea that it was possible in the first place.
"Well?" she said, before I'd gotten a word in.
"The salary is sixty percent above what I make now.
St. Louis costs thirty percent less to live in than Chicago.
The teaching component is everything I didn't know I'd been waiting for.
They have a relocation coordinator whose entire job is to make this transition easier.
" I exhaled. "They want me, Mom. They looked at my record and they came to me. "
She was quiet for a moment, and then she said, very simply: "That's my girl."
I laughed, surprised into it, the way she'd been making me laugh since I was seven years old.
"It's in St. Louis," I added, like she needed reminding.
"I heard that part when you first told me about it.
" A pause, and I could hear the smile in it.
"Your father and I are three and a half hours from St. Louis and seven hours from Chicago.
We see Justin approximately four times a year regardless.
If you're asking whether we'd mind having you closer—" Another pause. "We would not mind having you closer."
"That's not nothing."
"It's not nothing," she agreed. "Your father and I were talking. Whatever you decide, we're behind you — completely."
""If I do this, it won't be overnight," I said. "I'd give them two months' notice here — I wouldn't leave my unit in the lurch — and then get a temporary place for me and Justin in St. Louis until I can find the right house. It's a lot of moving parts."
"Then here's one less to worry about." Her voice was certain.
"Once you're down there, anytime you need to go look at houses, or you just need a hand with Justin — you call us.
St. Louis is what, three and a half hours?
That's nothing, Jess. Your father would make that drive for a decent barbecue sandwich, never mind his grandson. Just tell us when."
I hadn't even thought that far ahead yet, and somehow the fact that she had made my throat tighten. "Mom."
"That's what we're here for." Simple, certain, the way she said everything that mattered. "Now tell me — how do you feel? Right now, in this moment?"
I looked around my kitchen. At Justin's drawings on the refrigerator. At Rosa's coffee mug on the counter. At the afternoon light coming through the window above the sink, the light I knew by heart, the light I was going to miss.
"Like I already know the answer," I said. "And I'm just working up the courage to say it out loud."
She was quiet for a moment. Then, softly: "You've never needed courage, Jess. You've always just needed permission to want what you want."
My throat tightened. "Mom."
"I know." I could hear the smile. "I love you. Call me when you're ready."
"I love you too." I paused. "Tell Dad not to pack a bag yet."
She laughed — warm and familiar, the laugh I'd been hearing my whole life. "I'll do my best. No promises."
Then I picked up my phone and called the relocation coordinator named Sarah.
Not to decide. Just to ask a few questions.
I was, after all, a very careful decision-maker.
Except that somewhere in the middle of the call, while Sarah was walking me through St. Louis neighborhoods and school districts and the timeline for listing a Chicago brownstone, I caught myself pressing one hand flat against my kitchen table the way I always did when something was too big to hold still.
Pinch me, I thought. Can this actually be happening?
A job that was everything I'd worked toward. A city that held the people I loved most. A man who answered on the first ring and said I wish I was there like it was the most natural thing in the world.
It was like someone had looked at the exact shape of the life I'd been building, piece by piece, on my own — and handed me the last piece I hadn't known was missing.
I didn't believe in fairy godmothers. I believed in hard work and careful decisions and building things that lasted.
But sitting at my kitchen table on a Tuesday morning in July, listening to Sarah describe a neighborhood in Clayton four blocks from Anne's house, I thought: if this is what a wish being granted feels like, I'll take it.