“That must be hard,” Piper said.
“It can be.” Rosamund pulled an Oreo apart. “Especially when things aren’t going well. You don’t have anyone to share the worry, so to speak.”
They sat in silence for a moment; then Kiersten said, “I was serious, you know, about dropping out.”
Piper gnawed on a pizza crust. The conversation they’d had on the front porch felt unreal, like a dream. The more she thought about it, the more impractical it seemed.
“This is a wake-up call,” Kiersten said, her voice thick with emotion. “Something needs to change.”
Rosamund reached for her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.
Piper flexed her jaw, working to keep her own emotions in check. During that phone call yesterday about Hawkeye Slaughter ... she’d felt sopowerless.
She hadn’t felt this way in a long time ... but now without her job, without the authority that came with it, she felt powerless again. Just like that day when she was nine years old.
She pushed the memory away and forced herself to focus on Kiersten.
“What’s the worst that can happen?” Kiersten asked. “We try something new and we’re still miserable? Then we ask the universe to refund our insanity, and we go back to the way we were before.”
Piper glanced at Rosamund to gauge her reaction to this proposal. Rosamund stared down at the Oreo in her hand as though it were the Rosetta stone. Then raised her chin and looked Kiersten in the eye.
“I could help,” Rosamund said quietly. “I have a PhD in English literature. I could teach grammar, writing, and history. I know a ton about history.”
Kiersten frowned. “I thought you wrote geology textbooks?”
Rosamund smiled. “Have you heard of Diana Gabaldon?”
Piper nodded at this mention of her favorite author, then blushed. She’d had a secret crush on Jamie, the kilt-clad hero of these novels, for many years now.
“I’m the Diana Gabaldon of Viking romance. I write under my pen name, Rosamund Thorvaldsen.”
Kiersten’s eyes widened. “You writeromance novels?”
Rosamund inclined her head regally. “Do you remember a series on Netflix a few years back calledShield-Maiden of Stamendahl?”
“Ilovedthat show,” Piper gushed. Actually she’d loved the extremely muscular actor who played the show’s hero, Ragnar the Bold.
“It’s based on one of my early novels,” Rosamund said modestly. “It paid off my mortgage and filled Guinevere’s 529 account with enough money to fund four years of college, plus my own retirement. I’m still writing a novel a year, but I’ll make time to help with homeschooling.”
Piper’s heart did a little flip. These women were basically strangers. She knew Rosamund but didn’t know her well. And she’d only really met Kiersten an hour ago, when she saw her vomiting in the driveway.
But she knew their struggles and understood their fears because she shared them. They were moms, too, attempting to raise kids in an anxious, competitive, technology-infused world, hurtling toward an unknown future. And that created a shortcut straight to the heart of what really mattered.
“Look, I need to think about this,” Piper finally said. “But ... I’m on administrative leave for the foreseeable future, so hypothetically, I have lots of free time at the moment. Plus I’m pretty good at math and science.”
Kiersten grabbed a trash bag and began to clean up the paper plates and napkins. “I realize this seems kind of sudden, and maybe a little crazy.”
Piper raised an eyebrow. “A lotcrazy.”
“Okay. A lot crazy,” Kiersten conceded. “And maybe I’m in shock and I’ll wake up tomorrow morning and think this is a ridiculous idea ... but let’s just pretend for a moment that we were going to do this. What subjects are left?”
“Art. And music. Everyone always focuses exclusively on the importance of thisStemnonsense.” Rosamund made a dismissive gesture with her paper plate. “But the fine arts are vital to a well-rounded education.”
“We could go to the National Gallery. And free concerts at the Kennedy Center,” Kiersten said. “I looked into things like this before we moved, before I realized we’d spend all our time at travel baseball tournaments and hockey games.”
Piper thrust three empty pizza boxes into the trash bag. “But what about things like grades and transcripts ... and college?”
“It’s one year,” Kiersten said. “Our oldest kids are in seventh grade. I don’t think one year of homeschooling in middle school will ruin their lives.”
