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After gorging ourselves on fish and chips at the shop with Fiona and her mom, we’d hustled Merry to bed and Viv into a much-needed shower and collapsed on the couch. No matter how many websites Art pulled up to show Viv that Rory would be fine without a middle-of-the-night visit, she’d been unwilling to renege on her agreement with the farmer until she’d had a chance to discuss it with the other kids. Not nearly as reluctantly as I would have assumed, Art had agreed to take her to check on the calf at 2 a.m.

It was hardly ideal, but neither was staying up all night listening for sounds of her sneaking out.

“Thrilled, exhausted, wrung out, excited, hopeful, and unbelievably proud of myself for pulling off something that once felt impossible,” I answered, shrugging. “And, at the same time, petrified that I bit off way more than I can chew.”

Art stiffened under me, then squirmed uncomfortably.

“Am I hurting you?” I asked, bracing to lift some of my weight off his shoulder.

“No!” Art pulled me back against him and relaxed. “It’s just…” He took a deep breath. “I have something to show you, and while I thought it would be a fun surprise, I’m now realizing it might be the absolute worst timing possible.”

My blood turned to icy sludge in my veins as dread pooled in my gut. I turned my body, hoisting myself up and out of his arms so I could look him in the eye.

“What did you do, Art?” I asked, crossing my arms.

“Can you please try to remember that this was supposed to be a nice surprise?” he begged, sitting up to reach for his laptop on the coffee table.

Too many doomsday scenarios were flashing through my head for me to formulate an answer.

He flipped open the laptop and typed a few keystrokes. A browser popped up, open to a website that made my jaw drop.

“Is that what I think it is?” I asked, my voice strangely calm considering my rioting emotions.

Art scrunched his face up in a grimace so tight he could only peer out at me from behind one tiny sliver of his right eye. “If you think it’s a state-of-the-art, fully automated and optimized web shop for your store, then yes?” he replied, bracing himself for an attack that never came.

Mostly because I couldn’t move as I stared at the glowing number 3 on the New Orders tab on the left side of the screen.

“What did you do, Art?” I repeated in a much smaller voice, as I fought the tears welling up in my eyes.

After spending days preparing for the grand opening, being up half the night with Merry, then on my feet for hours, and traipsing around town looking for Viv, I couldn’t remember ever being more tired, and I had dozens of cookies to prepare for the week ahead. I was already stretched to the max. Adding more to my plate wouldn’t just be hard: it was impossible. I’d been correct. It wasn’t a sustainable business model. I just hadn’t expected to be proven right quite so fast.

Worse, his surprise had burst my shiny bubble of pride. For years I’d been told that my idea was both unreasonable and unattainable, but I’d pulled it off anyway.. And with one seemingly well-intentioned gesture, Art had sided with everyone who’d repeatedly told me that a cookie shop wasn’t worth my time or the financial investment because the effort-to-profit ratio was unsustainable without a way to bolster the income.

Oblivious to the crater forming in my gut, Art pointed excitedly at the screen.

“Check it out! It’s really cool. People can place custom orders, but you can also list the shop’s bestsellers here. You get notifications on your phone when orders come in. And look! The first order is from Edna. Get this, it’s for baby shower cookies! And she says that she’ll plug the website in her next column. Turns out she writes for a major food blog in London. She gets millions of hits every month! Your shop is going to be huge! You’re going to get so many more customers this way!” Sensing me pulling away, Art babbled faster and faster.

Edna. Food blog. Millions. Huge. More customers. More. More. More.

I only caught a fraction of the increasingly agitated words washing over me as everything inside me shut down, leaving only two thoughts looping around and around in my head.

I’ll never be enough for him either. And, If I don’t get out of here right now, I’m going to start screaming, and I’ll never be able to stop.

Every bone in my body ached as I got to my feet and stumbled toward the door, not even bothering to pick up my shoes on the way. I didn’t care that it was fall in Scotland, or that my feet would be frozen before I walked more than twenty feet over stone cobbles.

“Meg? Where are you going?” Art’s frantic voice bounced off the shield of dense fog forming around my brain, only registering vaguely as something I should be upset about.

But that would have taken effort. And I had nothing left to give.

TWENTY-NINE

“Meg?” I dimly heard Peggy ask, but if I took my eyes or my focus off the crashing waves and the silver moon reflecting on the water, I’d have to do something about…

A fresh wave crashed onto the beach, taking with it the rest of my thought. Maybe it was that I’d have to do something about my feet. I couldn’t feel them anymore. That couldn’t be good.

“Meggy? Hen? Come down off there before ye slip and fall to yer death.”

Peggy’s voice might have been softened by her Scottish burr, but her commanding, matter-of-fact tone was the one mothers the world over used when they were done playing around. I let her take my hand and stepped down from the little seawall separating the high street from the short drop to the beach. Art and I liked to sit and drink our morning coffee on it after dropping Merry off at school. The cobbled archway leading to the sand was only a few yards away, but, as we both agreed, sometimes it was nice to enjoy the crash of the waves and the sea breeze without getting sand all over your feet.