I should have been there for her. She was here for me, and I’ve been an idiot.
“I’m a trash best friend. I am so sorry, Julia.”
“You can spend the next few weeks making it up to me.”
“Done.” I reach over and hug her. “Do you feel like telling me what happened?”
And she does. We talk and we eat and we laugh until her phone chirps on the grass next to her. “It’s Noelle,” she says. “We had plans to FaceTime. I can stay a little longer, though, if you need it…?”
I shake my head. “Go. I’ll be okay here.”
And maybe I will be.
But I also don’t think I’m done fighting quite yet.
28
I’ve graduated to drilling holes. Seventy-two holes on the neck, three different sizes. This piece requires more work than anything else on the harp, and I love seeing it come together little by little.
Maxine is in the spray booth, but she trusts me enough to leave me alone out here with the drill press, which is significantly more powerful and more precise than the handheld power drill I’ve seen my parents wield during wedding disasters. Operating heavy machinery requires all my focus, and I can’t let my mind slip without risking losing a finger. The way this work anchors me—I’ve never felt that before.
What I’ve learned, among many things, is that the harp is a living instrument. Over time, wood warps. Maxine has clients who bought harps from her a decade ago who still come back for adjustments. I like that, too: this instrument’s ability to change. I used to think the harp was stuck in time, a relic of the past. And that’s just not true. It can innovate. It can evolve.
Maybe I can too.
“This might be a weird question,” I say when Maxine emerges from the spray booth, leaving behind the outfit that looks more like something a beekeeper or an astronaut would wear than a harp maker. She gives me this look, like she’s come to not just anticipate weird questions from me but to enjoy them. “But why did you take me on? You didn’t know me. You didn’t have to do that.”
At first I don’t think I’ll get a real answer, but she leans against the counter, drawing a fingertip along the smooth wood of a half-finished harp. “It had been a while since I’d had anyone else in the studio, I suppose. It can get pretty quiet in here, which may sound strange because it’s usually so noisy. I love living alone, I do—but that’s part of the problem when you live where you work. I missed having a coworker.”
“I think I’m touched.” I read her so wrong during our first meeting, when I thought she was lonely because her kids had moved out and moved on. She wanted someone in the studio with her, and it fills me with a sense of belonging I never felt with B+B to realize I am that someone.
That earns me a smile. “You know,” she says, “one of my regular conferences is going to be down in Portland in December. You wouldn’t be interested in tagging along, would you?”
I just stare at her. “Are you serious? Yes, one-hundred-percent yes. Thank you. Thank you!”
“It might be boring,” she warns. “A lot of old people, a lot of old instruments.”
“I’m sold.”
Maybe this won’t ever be more than a hobby. Maybe it won’t be my future career. Maybe I’ll look back on it when I’m older as something I did for a summer, a fun story to tell. Whatever it becomes, I don’t have to know yet what it means. I have time. Everyone’s been telling me I have time to fall in love, to discover who I want to spend the rest of my life with.
But it’s not just a who. It’s a what, too.
No matter how much I love working at Maxine’s, the moment I leave, the ache in my heart returns, taunting me on my drive back home. It’s been a week since the blowup with my parents and with Tarek, and I thought the ache would have dulled by now, but it’s only deepened, a new hollowness that lives next to my heart.
The first person I want to tell about everything that happened today, the conference and the drilling—which I’m sure one or both of us would make a dirty joke about—is Tarek. And I can’t.
I’m expecting an empty house, the loneliness I’ve gotten so used to over the past week. I’m not prepared for my parents waiting for me in the living room, reminding me of the night they told us about their separation and all the talks we never had after that.
“You’re not with a client?” I ask, slowly sliding my bag to the floor.
“We were thinking it might be time for us to have a talk,” Mom says. She exchanges a glance with my dad. “A talk that’s probably very overdue.”
“Oh,” I say quietly. Part of me wants to ask what happened to the whenever you’re ready she promised at Asher’s bachelorette party, but the truth is, I may never be ready. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you, too.”
Dad motions to the couch, and I sit down next to Mom while he takes the armchair.
“I feel like we need to start with the separation,” Mom says.
Oh my god. “Is it happening again? Are you separating? Or—”
“No,” she says emphatically, leaning forward to pat my knee. “We’re not. Sorry, I should have phrased that better. What I’m trying to say is that I think we may not have handled it the best the first time around.”
“Or at all,” I say.
Mom cringes. “We probably deserve that.”
“We thought we were these progressive, empathetic parents,” Dad says. “We were in counseling, and then
