Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Hope took an absent bite of the scrambled eggs she’d made herself for breakfast, then grimaced and spit the mouthful into a napkin.
The eggs hadn’t been that good when they had been hot, and now that they’d grown cold, they were downright awful.
Hope might have spent the better part of the past decade working near a kitchen, but that didn’t actually translate into any cooking skills of her own.
And that was before she let the food sit on her plate for an hour while she was woolgathering.
Not that it had gotten her anywhere. She still had no idea what she planned to do once the restaurant closed.
She could probably get a job at another restaurant, possibly even another elite restaurant in the city.
She had a lot of experience, after all, and she knew that Melissa would write her a great recommendation.
She might even be able to connect Hope with an opportunity directly; after so long in the Boston restaurant scene, Melissa knew everybody.
But… Hope didn’t think she wanted that.
Figuring out what she didn’t want had always been easier for Hope than figuring out what she did want.
She’d been blessed with a really supportive family who had been totally understanding when Hope had realized that college wasn’t the right path for her, and they’d never looked down on her for working as a waitress, even though her sister was a schoolteacher and her parents were both accountants, jobs that often got more respect.
She really was lucky in that regard. She had a wonderful family. She had an apartment. She had decent savings too, because her rent was very reasonable for Boston and she didn’t have any expensive hobbies.
Even so, her nervous system seemed determined to treat this professional step back as a total emergency. She’d spent most of the night lying awake, staring at her ceiling, trying to remember that this was not actually a catastrophe.
The bright light of day wasn’t helping her calm down though.
“Hello, hello!”
Hope’s sister, Felicity, called out as she let herself into Hope’s apartment. Felicity lived about fifteen minutes away, and she had her own set of keys. Even so, Hope was surprised by the appearance of her sister at ten thirty in the morning on a school day.
“Hey, Felicity,” she called back, so that her sister would know where to find her. “What are you doing here?”
Felicity breezed into the kitchen, bright and unhurried as ever.
“I had a doctor’s appointment this morning, so I took a half day,” Felicity explained, hefting two reusable grocery bags onto Hope’s small kitchen counter.
“Clean bill of health, thank goodness. Although I did have to sit through the whole lecture about drinking more water and getting more sleep, as if any teacher on earth has ever managed either.”
“The audacity, making you show up just to be told you’re fine,” Hope said in commiseration, “but if it’s any consolation, you look great.”
Felicity playfully fluffed her hair. The two sisters had always looked enough alike that they occasionally got asked if they were twins, but Felicity always looked like someone had taken Hope and added a really high-tech filter.
The loose chestnut waves were the same, and the warm brown eyes were shared too.
But Felicity just looked like she was walking around with perfect lighting on her at every moment.
“Thanks,” Felicity said. “It does sort of help. Anyway, I woke up today with weird energy, so I thought I would bring you some treats so that you don’t have that hangdog look on your face any longer.”
Hope dropped open her mouth in mock offense, then gestured at her own face. “This,” she said, waving her finger in a circle, “is not hangdog. This is contemplation.”
“Can you contemplate with muffins?” Felicity asked pointedly.
Hope scoffed. “I can do anything with muffins. Sheesh. It’s like you don’t even know me.”
While Felicity unpacked her grocery bags, which contained some healthy options like fresh fruit and Hope’s favorite quinoa salad, Hope poured herself another cup of coffee. That was one thing she could prepare perfectly, thank you very much.
“Girl, that is a wild amount of vanilla creamer,” Felicity commented as Hope doctored her coffee to perfection.
“Why do you always need to point that out?” Hope countered. It had the well-worn pattern of a habitual exchange, because, yes, Felicity always teased Hope about using too much creamer.
Hope hadn’t been bothered by her sister’s mocking before, however, and she wasn’t about to start now. Besides, the next thing Felicity removed from her grocery bags was Hope’s preferred brand of creamer.
“You can’t tease me and be my supplier,” Hope joked. She raised the coffee pot in her sister’s direction, but Felicity shook her head.
“I’ve already hit my limit for the day,” she said, casting the coffee a longing look. “Any more and I’ll never sleep tonight.”
When the two sisters settled in at the table, each with her own apple crumble muffin, Hope with her sweet, milky coffee and Felicity with herbal tea, Felicity finally revealed that she had a secret, sneaky intention for her visit.
She reached into the grocery bag, which Hope had mistakenly assumed to be empty, and pulled out a book.
“I got something for you,” Felicity said with the tone of somebody who was not giving you the kind of gift you’d want to receive.
Hope reached out cautiously and accepted a copy of…
“The Art of Taking the Next Step?” she asked incredulously.
Felicity gave her an innocent, winsome smile, but Hope had seen Felicity use that smile to try to get out of trouble for eating a crayon when she was four, so Hope remained unmoved.
“I don’t need a book,” she told her sister.
Felicity slid the book across the table. “Okay, first, it is actually illegal to say that to a teacher,” she said.
“Good thing you’re not a lawyer,” Hope teased.
“And second,” Felicity continued, “you are sulking. I am here to make sure you don’t keep sulking. And books help!”
No granddaughter of Miriam Landers would ever be caught dead saying that books didn’t help in almost any situation, so she reluctantly took the self-help volume and flipped through it, although she still felt too frazzled to actually take in anything on the pages.
“I haven’t exactly thought that far yet,” she admitted. And then, before her sister could say more, she added, “Not because I’m sulking. I’m just still in my pajamas because I work nights.”
“I bet you know what you don’t want, though,” Felicity said in a sing-song voice.
Ugh. Sisters. Always thinking they knew everything. And it was even more annoying when they were right.
“Okay, fine,” Hope admitted, because, really, what was the point of arguing with Felicity? “I do know that I don’t want to just jump mindlessly into another restaurant job. I loved working at Sharp’s, but it wasn’t just because of the work. I had a whole community there. I had people. And…”
Hope trailed off. Felicity waited patiently while Hope thought through her words.
“I liked feeling like what I did mattered,” she concluded.
“People don’t usually think about waiting tables in that kind of way, but I liked being a part of people’s best evenings, you know?
I was there for their anniversaries, their birthdays.
Heck, we got a proposal in there at least once a month.
And I wasn’t important to those nights, not really, but I did get to help make sure everything went right.
And so I got to go home every day feeling like I had done something good. ”
“I get that,” Felicity said. “You’ve always been good at that, at being the ‘behind the scenes’ person who gets stuff done. And it never seemed to bother you that, when you do your job well, people don’t notice all the hard work you put in.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Hope said, “but it makes me feel like a magical little elf from a fairy tale, which I think we can all admit is awesome.”
“It’s not a bad thing at all,” Felicity protested.
“I just don’t want your desire to help people stop you from taking the time that you need to figure out what you want.
Maybe that’s what I’m saying with the book.
I’m not rushing you. It’s actually the opposite.
I want you to slow down and take a minute to really think it through. ”
“Did you try to lull me into a false sense of complacency with muffins to make me listen to your sisterly advice?” Hope asked.
“Yes,” Felicity said.
Hope took a large bite. “It’s a fair trade,” she said after she chewed and swallowed. “You got anything else for me?”
Felicity beamed. “I do, actually.” She gave Hope a serious look. “I think you should go stay with Miriam.”
For the second time in as many days, Hope found herself blinking across the table at someone in mute miscomprehension.
“What?” she asked.
“Well, I called her the other day, just to say hi, and did you know that she just had pneumonia?”
Hope nearly choked on the sip of coffee she’d just taken.
“What?” she sputtered.
Felicity nodded grimly. “Yeah, she’s fine, she’s recovering, and I guess she didn’t tell us because she didn’t want us to worry.”
Hope rubbed her forehead. That was an absolutely classic Miriam Landers move. She was fiercely independent, and she often feared her family viewing her as feeble. This was absurd, in Hope’s opinion, as nobody could ever look at Miriam and take away that she was anything but robust and vigorous.
Hope’s dad did tend to get a little… twitchy whenever somebody in the family was sick though.
Last winter, Hope’s mom had suffered from an extremely mild case of the flu, and it had been all Hope and Felicity could do to talk their father down from wanting to take his wife to the emergency room.
He would not have reacted well to the news that his mother had caught pneumonia, even if it was a mild case.
“Okay, well, that’s frustrating,” Hope said. “I’m glad she’s okay, though.”
“Yeah, she’s the same unstoppable Mimi,” Felicity said fondly. “But I was thinking that, since you need a minute to regroup, and she could use a little bit of help at the moment…”
Felicity held her hands up to either side, and then brought them together.
“Match made in heaven and all that,” she concluded.
For a moment, Hope’s sleep-deprived brain didn’t put together what her sister was suggesting. Then she realized.
“Oh!” she said, more shocked than put off. “You think I should… move to Magnolia Shore?”
“It doesn’t have to be a permanent move,” Felicity corrected hastily. “I just know that you’re like me, which means that you’re worrying about her all alone in her house while she’s recovering.”
“Very true,” Hope admitted.
“Honestly, I would consider going myself if not for—” Felicity grimaced. “The school year. I can’t exactly hand my class off to a substitute for weeks in the middle of the term.”
“We’re real birds of a feather, us Landers,” Hope said. “We’re all trying to take care of each other all the time.”
“There are worse things,” Felicity said with a laugh. “But yes. It would end up just being a race to who could care for the other the best, and nobody would actually get any rest.”
“And then there’s me,” Hope said. “Who needs an emotional reset, but not a physical one.”
“Bingo,” Felicity said.
Hope was nodding along. It definitely wasn’t a bad idea. And even though Hope loved Boston, and loved being near enough to her sister that little drop-ins like this were possible, she did miss Miriam and hadn’t been to see her nearly recently enough.
“You know,” she told her sister, “you might be a genius.”
Felicity beamed. “I’ve only been telling you this for years.”
The sisters both laughed and clinked their mugs together. And by the time that Felicity headed back to teach her afternoon class, Hope’s mind was already made up.
It was time for a reset. And where better to take it than in Magnolia Shore?