“How?”
“Well. Yes. You ended your marriage, and you have this great job, and you have Cody.”
“Yes. I have Cody. He certainly changed a lot of things for me. But you’ve done a lot too. You moved across the country, your house is so cute, and it’s very you. For the first time, you aren’t in the house you grew up in. You really stood up to your brother, even though he’s your only immediate family member left. Juniper & Sage is a massive success, and that was your vision. Just because everything doesn’t feel different in two months doesn’t mean you aren’t doing enough. I think you just don’t know how to rest, Cara.”
Well, Cara didn’t like that at all. Mainly because it kind of felt true, but didn’t everybody feel like maybe they weren’tgood at resting? Wasn’t that the kind of excuse people threw out there when they just wanted to do nothing? When they didn’t want to grow or change?
How did you know if you actually didn’t rest very well, or if you were just trying to make excuses for staying in your comfort zone?
“Honestly, I think caretaking your mom like that really burned you out. Ofcourseit did. But I think now your gauge for what is reasonable is a little bit broken. I think you don’t really know what life looks like when you only have yourself to worry about.”
Well, no. She didn’t really. But then, neither did Marlowe. She had gone from being married to Aiden to being with Cody. It wasn’t likeshehad spent a lot of time alone. She didn’t think there was anything wrong with that, she just wondered where Marlowe got the conviction to offer up solitude as a good thing.
“I understand that there’s more you want to do. But you have to be patient with yourself. Anyway, you went to the ER. That’s something.”
Cara scowled. “Yeah, that wasn’t really intentional.”
“It was still adventurous,” Marlowe said.
Cara sighed and leaned back on the couch, taking a sip of her coffee.
“I wanted to magically build a whole new life where everything felt good, and I felt like a full-grown adult. I do feel like a full-grown adult. That’s silly. But what you just said… About living outside of my parents’ house for the first time. That is true. It’s such a strange thing, because my mom wasn’t my mom for a very long time.” Her chest ached just thinking about it. “After my dad died, she never really recovered. It was like she lost the will to do much of anything. Even though that got better at a certain point, then the dementia started getting worse and… It’s been so much of my life. I just thought that maybe if I left Vermont, it would be different. If I weren’t around all the people that reminded me of it all the time, asking me about how she was, asking me about how I was, then maybe it would help me get over it. But it hasn’t. Nothing has helped me get over it. Nothing has helped fix this.”
“My family was so dysfunctional that losing my parents didn’t feel like this. I wish that I could… I wish I could relate so that I could tell you how long it takes. But I can’t. All I know is that the grief of not having family is something that you just have to carry around with you sometimes. But you can make different kinds of families.”
“You tried to make one with my brother, and he betrayed you.”
“Yes. He did. It was really hard. But I have you, Cara, and that has been one of the single most important relationships in my life. You were my anchor through all of this. I wish that I could help you with what you’re going through.”
“I think I’m having an existential crisis. I wasn’t free for a long time. I mean, not that I was trapped. But it was hard. There was nothing else that I could do, and so I… Yeah. I was trapped. But because of that, I didn’t have to make decisions about what I wanted. You and Aiden found this place, and it was because of you that I even have the bakery. You’re the one who told Cody I could do it.”
“It’s okay to get help.”
“I’ve had so little of it.” She said the words, and then she felt guilty, because she didn’t want Marlowe to feel like they were directed at her. “Marlowe… I don’t mean you.”
“It’s okay if you do. I should have helped you more. I should’ve encouraged you to leave. Take some time to yourself.”
“I wouldn’t have known what to do with it if you had offeredme that.”
That was a crushing realization.
She wouldn’t have known what to do with that even if Marlowe had offered it to her. She didn’t know who she was without that responsibility. Maybe that was what she found so disorienting now. She didn’t know who she was when she wasn’t taking care of another person, because that made so many decisions for her.
Maybe that was part of the problem now, being stuck at home on crutches, even though it had only been a day.
Because the bakery gave her structure and responsibility. It was a taskmaster, in a way. Something she needed to tend to.
It was a job, yes, but she wondered how much of it was her transferring those feelings that she’d had as a caregiver into a place.
“Well, at least I’m going to learn to be a survival expert,” she said. “It doesn’t really solve anything, but it’s something to do.”
“It’s a start,” Marlowe said. “But just remember, so is everything else you’ve done. I think it’s all going to make sense to you in a little bit. In six months, I think you’re going to be in a completely different place.”
“It seems really silly that you’re the one reassuring me.”
“Not at all. Life is hard, you don’t have to have had your husband leave you for it to be hard. Anyway, I realized a lot of things about myself in a really short amount of time. The biggest one is that I am stronger than I thought. Now that I realize how strong I am, I also realize that I need a different kind of relationship. But I had to have those realizations about myself first.”
“That sounds fine, but can I have casual sex first?”
