“It did, or it didn’t. Maybe he can’t deal with the hurt and is clinging to what he can, to make his life seem more normal.” Her sparkling blue eyes connected with mine as she straightened the tablecloth.
“True, but I’m stuck in a rut...not sure what to do or where to go and my mind spins the same damn thoughts all the time, and nothing gets fixed. I’m still broken. We’re still broken.”
When neither of us said a word, I listened for the call I hoped was out there. Was I just not hearing the answer? Was the solution in front of me all along, and I’d chosen to ignore it? The plink of a water droplet dripping from the faucet to the stainless-steel sink reverberated, and the constant hum of the heater filled the room. Everything else must have been on mute.
Pickles looked directly at me then, her face stoic and unmoving for a moment. Kindness filled and projected from her eyes, and I imagined what sort of mother she had been, and still was, to Andrew. He was a lucky man—that was for certain.
“I heard something recently, dear, and I’ve thought about it often since then. It went like this: ‘One day someone is going to hug you so tight all your broken pieces are going to stick back together.’ I’m not sure who said it, but in my opinion, it’s true for you.”
The opportunity to respond to her words never arose; her break time was up. She got caught up in helping one library patron after another, and I had to get back to the family.
As I cleaned up the break room table and packed up my things, my thoughts performed pirouettes. Who could hug me that tightly, to fix everything and put me back together? And while I willed my mind to imagine Theo, his face as I once knew it, not the tight indifferent one from the night before, the picture never appeared. Instead, the kind, soft face of Andrew bubbled up from the deep and floated to the surface. It stayed there.
. . . . .
We didn’t hear much from Theo that week, and Thanksgiving passed by without a word from him. I hoped his silence implied a start on his road to emotional healing. All the texts that eventually arrived were short and cordial, but cold, the words like little icicles piercing my heart each time I read them. The children visited the Inn at different times of the day, and I relished the quiet that ascended and allowed me time to ponder the situation when all the little feet were away.
My mind swam with questions. Did Theo think about us, about me, at all? Did he place all the blame on me? What was going to happen to everyone? Again, and again I returned to the question, What did I want to happen? As much as I longed to ride off into the sunset with Andrew, it was clear my circumstances required much thought. My life was one, hot, complicated mess.
A few days before we were scheduled to return to Ohio, I decided a quick jaunt to the village bakery would force me out of the cottage and provide a different set of walls for at least the day. I’d been wallowing in self-pity; I knew that, and apparently, so did my mother. She had been kind enough to point it out to me the night before, after dinner.
“Sadie, your behavior lately...it’s so...so crass,” she’d said when we were cleaning up for the night.
Her words stopped me in my tracks. “What are you talking about, Mom?”
“You have a good life and one you need to live. Stop the wallowing. Stop the blaming.”
My gut heaved as I grappled to find the appropriate words, those that would say what I intended without hurting her in return. “Why didn’t you leave the subject alone? Did you have to call attention to my ‘crass behavior’ as you call it? I realize I’m behaving this way and ashamed of it.” With anger inside me, I practically spat the words at my mother, but I turned my voice down so my voice didn’t carry to the kids. “And really, Mom. That’s like a case of the kettle calling out the pot.”
Why didn’t Mom let me do what I needed to do to heal, to find my way? It was a good question to ask, but the night before wasn’t the right time. However, that morning, after I’d thought about my rude behavior, it dawned on me Mom’s words held truth to them, and I’d been out of line. My mother and I might be entrenched in a quagmire of unresolved issues, but she still deserved my respect. A whispered apology accompanied my request for her to watch the kids for the morning. She accepted my apology, gave me a hug, and agreed to help, maybe to gain back my favor.
A promise to bring a box of fresh pastries upon my return brought a smile to the kids’ faces as I said goodbye. The wind skimming off the water along the street pebbled my skin, and I tucked a few stray hairs behind my ears, straining my eyes against the sun to see the lake before me. A delinquent seagull squawked and circled the marina, and a person on a motorcycle honked as I strolled by. The glare from the sun kept me from seeing who it was, but I waved back anyway.
In the distance, as the pathway rounded the curve toward the main thoroughfare, the facade of the bakery came into view. My mood lifted at the sight, and I drew in a large,
