“Oh, right.” Eve rolled her eyes at me. “Because men don’t like cute hipster women with perky breasts who run successful businesses and bake pies every day. You’re like Seattle’s June Cleaver. What’s not to like?”
“Marginally successful business,” I corrected, for the sake of honesty. “Well, sort-of-slowly-declining business.”
“Fine.” Eve conceded. “Struggling business. But, Lolly, you’re smart and kind. You’re responsible. You’re the most loyal person I’ve ever met. And you’ve got this whole adorable vintage vibe going on.” She gestured to my cardigan, poodle skirt, cat-eye glasses ensemble. “You’re totally datable. That’s not the problem.” Eve leveled a knowing look at me.
“Oh? So what is?” I hopped off the stool, feeling self-conscious at her matter-of-fact assessment of my attributes. I needlessly straightened a stack of charcoal facial cleansing bars.
“You can’t fall in love again because you’re already in love.” She gave me a pointed look. “You’re still stuck on Rory.”
I didn’t answer. A couple approached, carrying take-out Starbucks cups and a cloth bag brimming with kale and long spears of brussels sprouts. “Do you have any beard balm?” the man inquired, and Eve gave him a sample of her Cedar Beard Balm for Dapper Gents. It smelled like pine sap, peculiarly pleasing and bracing at the same time.
Eve turned back to me after the man had paid for a tin of beard balm. “You can’t get over him. You broke his heart and broke your own heart, and even though you made him leave, you’ve never actually let him go.”
She wasn’t wrong.
“I don’t know how to let him go,” I admitted honestly.
“Don’t know how to or don’t want to? Those are two very different things.” Eve crossed her arms and fixed me with a surprisingly sympathetic look. “Lolly, I love you like a sister. You’re my best friend. You’ve rescued me from some very dark places. And I wouldn’t be a good friend if I didn’t tell you the truth. Rory isgone. He is married and a father. He isn’t stuck on you. He’s living in Florida with his wife and child, I’m sure enjoying his dream job as team physician for whatever sports team hired him down there.”
“The Tampa Bay Rowdies,” I volunteered. “Soccer.”
Eve shook her head. “The fact that you even know that is just sad.”
“I know it is.” I turned away to hide my flushed face. I was embarrassed by Eve’s assessment. In truth I felt a little caught out. I knew that Eve loved me, that she had my best interests at heart, but I couldn’t help feeling like my tender heart was standing stripped and naked in front of her. I felt exposed, criticized. The problem was, she was right.
“If you’re actually going to check off something on that list, you’re going to have to get unstuck,” Eve said gently but firmly. She tapped the cover of the diary, sitting next to a stack of oatmeal-and-honey solid lotion bars wrapped in burlap and tied with twine.
“How?” I asked, snatching up the diary and tucking it back into the wide pocket of my skirt.
“No idea.” Eve shrugged. “You’re going to have to figure that out for yourself. But I do know one thing. You can’t stay where you are and expect a change. It’s Newton’s first law of motion. Objects at rest stay at rest. Objects in motion remain in motion. I’m paraphrasing.” She cocked an eyebrow at me and waited.
I always forgot that while Eve had majored in marketing at the insistence of her high-powered CEO father, she’d minored in physics simply because it intrigued her.
“Am I the object in this illustration?” I asked dryly.
“Yep.” Eve hauled a small wooden crate from under the table and grabbed a handful of lip balms. Blackberry–sweet corn, rosemary-mint, and coriander-lime. She eyed me and said matter-of-factly, “Lolly, you are an object at rest. You have to start the ball rolling; move forward or you’re never going to get where you want to be.”
She was right. I knew she was right. But deep in my heart, if I was perfectly honest with myself, I couldn’t imagine a future that was better than the things I had lost. I was held back by the dual pull of responsibility and regret. I could not countenance leaving my family or leaving my responsibilities at the diner. And I could not imagine falling in love again. Eve had pegged it correctly. I was terribly stuck. I was aching to move forward, determined to move forward, but I had no idea how to do so. I was an object at rest, and I desperately needed someone or something to give me a shove in the right direction.
8
The morning aftermy chat with Eve, I woke to find a note propped against the French press on the kitchen counter.
Come see me when you’re up. —G
It was early and still pitch-dark outside. On Mondays the diner was closed, but I woke before dawn anyway, just from force of habit. From the kitchen I saw the light shining in the guest cottage across the yard. Aunt Gert was awake. Bertha, the basset hound we’d gotten after Myrtle passed, whined, standing by the door, wagging her tail with a doleful yet expectant look on her jowly face.
“Here you go, girl.” I scratched her head for a moment, then let her out into the backyard and measured out her food in her bowl by the kitchen counter. A moment later I heard her scratch at the door to be let in. She knew breakfast was waiting for her and didn’t care to be outside in the damp cold any longer than she had to. I let her in, and she headed straight for her food bowl, her improbably low-slung bodyalmost touching the tile floor. I pressed the lever on the electric kettle to start my essential morning coffee process, then quickly ground fresh beans and measured four heaping spoonfuls of Stumptown Coffee into my French press. While I waited for the water to boil I went to see Aunt Gert.
Still in my joggers, eyes gritty with sleep, I wandered across the backyard to the guest cottage my parents had built years ago. A cute little box nestled beneath the arms of a giant sequoia, it had a huge picture window and an arched front door—a tiny house before tiny houses were cool. I stood at the front door, yawning as a steady light mist fell softly on my head, and knocked once.
Two years ago, Aunt Gert had written to my father and asked if she could come stay with us. She had no one else, she explained, promising to not be a nuisance and offering her services in the diner. In truth none of us was thrilled. My mother had always been her favorite relative and had insisted we maintain contact with her while I was growing up. We had even visited her in New England twice when I was in elementary and middle school. Although my mother and Aunt Gert had enjoyed a close relationship, Aunt Gert was not a warm person, and her prickly demeanor had been both fascinating and intimidating to me as a child. However, my mother had been almost like a daughter to her, which is why, when we got her letter, Dad had written back and agreed, even though Mom had been gone almost eight years by that point. She was family, he explained to Daphne and me, and you don’t turn away family, even if that family happens to be a brilliantly eccentric religion and mythology professor with a penchant for wildly patterned caftans.
At my knock, Aunt Gert opened the door. She was wearing a bright pink silk robe embroidered with turquoise cranes against a lush backdrop.
“Cool robe.” I admired it.
“A gift from an enamored Chinese diplomat when I visited Shanghai years ago,” she said, waving her hand dismissively and standing back so I could enter. As I brushed past her I caught a whiff of a musty, exotic odor—black pepper and incense and star anise, hinting at foreign adventures long past.
