“At your house?”
“Actually, no.” Hope gave him a different address. Archie Venerable was an escape hatch. Her parents hated his guts, he was rough, a little crude, and they thought he was ‘on drugs.’
He was mostly smoking pot, though. So, it was just enough of the wild side for Hope without being a total burnout.
She’d go out with Archie tonight and blow off steam. She just had to wait out her parents a little. They would be sure they’d won, and the argument was over.
Her parents were in the den watching some Civil War documentary. They’d fall asleep without fail during that thing. By the time they did, it was dark. And it was time for her to go.
Hope slid her window open and then pulled the screen gently into her room. Her parents were clueless about how she snuck out of the house. Her room was on the second floor. But there was a little overhang over the bay window below. It was wide enough to stand on. She climbed out and steadied herself on it. She leaned over to be sure they weren’t standing at the window. Unlikely, but best to check. The coast was clear.
She used her arms to hang down and then dropped the few feet to the grass. She landed on her backside with a thud. She was still for a second, but no one inside had heard her land.
Hope dusted herself off. And stood up straight. Archie was going to pick her up one block over. She adjusted her attitude and her purse across her shoulder.
See if they could control her now! She ran down the block and over to where she’d told him to meet her.
Archie was there, looking dangerous. He had a cool car, a cool-looking cigarette, and a Johnny Depp vibe. She could work with it.
“Hey,” he said as he leaned over to push open the passenger side door.
“Hey.”
“Get in.”
Hope looked back down the street. Take that, Mother. You may be able to crush this dream of mine, but you don’t know everything, do you?
Hope’s life did change that night.
Drastically. And it had nothing to do with her mother’s plan.
ChapterEleven
Libby, Present Day
It had gone well with Hope. Libby couldn’t have predicted the state of Hope’s marriage, but still, her old friend had won that entire cooking contest.
Hope was at a crossroads like Libby had been. Maybe this was the fates aligning.
They had lately, for Libby. Except for one area, her kids. She wished they’d check in more often. This was summer at the lake; she had a ton of room. Surely, they could all find a week, or a long weekend, and visit. She hated to hope too much for that.
She knew she needed to be happy without them in her day-to-day life. But still, every time she went on a boat ride or, more recently, wiped out while trying to stay upright after dropping one ski, she thought,the kids would love this.
She stood out on her dock at sunset. Tonight, it was orange and pink. Other nights it was blue and gray. Still, other nights, it was a faded blue. Bradley, the Great Blue Heron, skimmed across the water.
“Hey, Bradley.” She had named him Bradley. He seemed fine with it. She snapped a pic of Bradley. Libby sent the pic in a group chat to her three kids.
She didn’t expect them to uproot their lives or anything, but maybe, if she kept slowly showing them how great it was here at Nora House, she’d get them out for a visit.
She’d keep working on them, little by little.
She was needed here; she was doing something important. Her kids weren’t responsible for keeping her busy or happy. That was her gift to them, she knew.
The list of things she had to do for Irish Hills was long. Too long, but she’d been having the time of her life checking things off as they accomplished them. ‘They’ was the key word.
Dean, J.J., and Keith had been her squad! They’d helped her each step of the way, from Dean’s skills to J.J’s upbeat belief that this would work, to Keith’s, well. Somehow, she’d fallen into a romance with her old boyfriend.
This thought continued to make her blush and made her believe that there were second chances when you least expected them.
