Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Normally, quilting soothed Hope’s nerves. There was something about the repetition of it, the way that she needed to keep both her hands and her eyes involved in the task without stressing out her mind.
Today, it wasn’t working. She was… flustered.
Miriam cleared her throat from where she sat on the other end of the couch.
“You feeling okay?” Hope asked. This was the third or fourth time that Miriam had cleared her throat in the last few minutes.
“I am feeling fine,” Miriam insisted. “But you, my darling, are so tense that you’re practically making the air vibrate around you.”
“I’m fine,” Hope said automatically, before she remembered who she was talking to. Miriam’s eyebrow arched, and suddenly, Hope was seven years old again and trying to blame Felicity for eating the last ice cream bar before lunch. “Okay, you got me.” She sighed. “I’m feeling… unsettled.”
“No,” Miriam said, feigning shock. “You don’t say!”
“What was it you used to tell me when I was a kid?” Hope shot back, smiling a little. “Sarcasm isn’t becoming?”
“Yes, well, I lied. It’s very funny,” Miriam shot back without missing a beat. “Mostly when I do it. Anyway, spill the beans, little girl. I’m your grandmother. You can’t lie to me.”
Hope put down her project and snuggled up into her grandmother’s side. It was as comforting now as it had been when she was a child and, once again, Hope was struck with a wave of happiness that her sister had convinced her to come spend this time with Miriam.
“I like it here,” Hope said, tucking her head onto her grandmother’s shoulder. “Magnolia Shore. I honestly love this little town.”
“I love it too,” Miriam said, smoothing Hope’s hair. “There’s a lot to love about it. But talk to me more about why that seems to be stressing you out so much.”
Hope paused, sorting through her thoughts.
“It just wasn’t the plan, you know? None of this was the plan.
But…” She paused again, but Miriam didn’t rush her.
“The disruption of the plan made me realize that I didn’t totally have a plan.
I was just working at the restaurant, and that was fine, I liked it.
I would have kept doing it. But I’m not sure that that counts as, you know, a life plan. ”
Miriam hummed. “Well,” she said. “One thing I’ve learned in my life is that plans change. And, yes, sometimes you don’t have a plan, not really. Things are rarely as linear as you’d like them to be.”
“That is very annoying advice,” Hope complained. “I’m not saying it’s bad advice, but why can’t things just be easy?”
She felt Miriam’s quiet laughter shake where they were cuddled up against one another.
“I hear you, sweetie. But if things were always easy, we would miss out on a lot of the good stuff.”
“Yeah,” Hope said absently, thinking about this. “I guess that’s kind of my problem. Because I don’t know if I should try to get back on the line where I started or just… let the diversion be the new line.”
Miriam hummed. “And what would this new line look like?”
Hope barely even dared to say it out loud. “I don’t know,” she hedged. “I mean, like I said, I like it here. What if I… just stayed?”
To Miriam’s credit, she didn’t reveal anything beyond a little jolt that went through her body.
“I’m not saying I’ve decided,” Hope added, even though just saying it out loud had sounded really appealing. “But I like spending time with you. I like being part of the book club. I like the friends I’ve made here. I like my job at Riverstone Kitchen. And I…”
“Yes?” Miriam prodded when Hope fell silent.
“I think I have a really big crush on Jared,” she admitted in a whisper.
“And I feel so silly about it, because he’s probably not even interested in me that way.
I mean, he’s super professional, so he probably never even thought about me like that.
So, I really shouldn’t put that on my list of considerations at all, but—”
“Whoa, whoa,” Miriam interrupted before Hope’s torrential words could go any further.
“Listen, I don’t know what the future holds.
I might have a lot of experience in this life, but even I, in my great wisdom, do not know the future.
But I think that there is a lot of merit to taking risks.
To telling the people you like that you like them, even if it might end up causing a little bit of mess.
It’s hard to do that, especially when you’re young.
You haven’t made enough swerves yet to know that veering off the beaten path will turn out okay. But, honey.”
Miriam shifted so that she could look at Hope more directly. The love shining in her eyes made Hope feel warm and happy and safe.
“Happiness is always worth pursuing,” Miriam went on. “Grab for it when you see it. Sometimes it will work out. Sometimes it won’t. But it’s worth trying.”
“I guess that sounds right,” Hope said, even though she still felt doubts plaguing her.
Luckily, Miriam seemed to understand that her lingering doubt wasn’t because Hope didn’t trust in her grandmother’s advice.
“Think about it,” she advised. “I mean, as my recent illness showed us, nothing is guaranteed. You don’t know when life is going to throw an obstacle in your path.
So waiting for the so-called right time to do something?
It’s a trick. There’s never going to be a perfect time. There’s only right now.”
“I will definitely think about it,” Hope promised.
It was the best she could offer at the moment.
She didn’t know where the future was taking her, but she felt really hopeful about the possibilities before her, and that was a refreshing change from feeling anxious, as she had been just a little while ago.
“You have one life, my darling,” Miriam said, pressing a kiss to Hope’s temple before picking her quilting project back up, accurately sensing that Hope needed some time to work through their discussion on her own. “Don’t let fear stop you from living that one life to its absolute fullest.”
Hope picked up her project too, and let her mind drift toward what the absolute fullest might look like if she truly allowed herself to dream.