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We finish our meal, but neither of us has room for dessert. “So, what do we do from here?” I ask.
“Go home and unload the truck. Even with all hands on deck, it will take at least an hour.”
“In that case, I guess we should get back on the road.” I slip cash into the payment folder before standing up to pull Moira’s chair out for her. I gently put my hand on the small of her back and lead her out of the restaurant. There’s a shift in the air between us, as she leans into my fingertips. For the first time in years, I realize that I want more. I want her. And not just for one night.
Chapter17
Moira
As soon as Ethan and I hit the main road, I close my eyes and pretend to sleep. I’m one hundred percent on emotional overload, and I’m about to lose consciousness for real, when the angel on my shoulder whispers, “Let him in, he’s the one.”
I silently remind her that Ethan only wants to be friends. “He’s just as afraid as you are,” she replies. “Set your worries aside and I promise everything will work out.”
Not to be ignored, the devil on my other shoulder practically yells, “It’ll never work! He’ll never leave Los Angeles for you. He’s rich and you’re poor ...”
I’m sure he’d go on and on, but the angel retaliates with, “Love is not determined by finances.”
“He could have anyone. Why would he pick her?” That damn devil hits the nail on the head, and it hurts.
“Why wouldn’t he pick her? She’s smart and beautiful and plucky …”
“Poor, overburdened, has a derelict house, three kids … and let’s not get started on those stretch marks.”
I inwardly tell them both to shut up, but peace does not find me. My brain starts to play a kind of travelogue of my life.
When I was a child, my only dream was to get married and have kids someday—kids that I would never leave. I thought I could heal my own wounds by being the mother I wished I’d had. It wasn’t until I’d become such a mother that I realized that would only get me so far.
I don’t recall if my parents had a happy marriage before Mom left. All I remember is her leaving, and the mess she left in her wake. Dad started drinkinga lot. He wasn’t a mean drunk, just a melancholy one. After a couple of years, we moved in with Grandpa Jack and Grandma Adele and we started treating them like our parents. I don’t think our dad even noticed.
I didn’t cry when my dad died. I’d mourned him long before his spirit left this world. I did, however, hope that he and my mother would meet on the other side and finally find peace together.
Conversely, when Grandma Adele died a few years later, I cried so much you could have filled a lake with my tears. I was only in my mid-twenties and suddenly I was the old lady of my family. I was going to have to traverse the rocky road of womanhood without the gentle and guiding hand of any maternal figure.
I cried when Everett died, but along with the grief, I was rocked to the core that I was solely responsible for the lives of three children. I spent way more time stuck in the phase of anger than sadness. I’m not mad anymore though, just kind of numb. My four-year marriage has become nothing more than a vague memory, like I’d watched it in a movie instead of living it myself.
When I graduated from high school, Grandpa Jack had asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I answered, “Happy.” Remembering that sets off a PowerPoint presentation in my head. Happy times pop up as still photos. Yet for every one of them, there was an underlying feeling of unsettledness.
Maybe that’s what life is. Maybe no one is happy all the time and you just have to string enough moments together to have something beautiful to show when it’s all done. I feel the truck start to slow down until it stops altogether.
Opening my eyes, I look over at Ethan. “Why are we stopped? Are we out of gas or something?”
He reaches over and touches my face. “You’re crying.”
I scrub my hands over my eyes and discover that I am. “I must have been having a bad dream,” I tell him while blinking back the rest of the tears that are trying to escape.
“I don’t think that’s it.” His concern practically undoes me. He places his palm over my hand; his skin is warm and comforting. “You can talk to me, Moira.”
Blinking quickly, I answer, “It’s just that our conversation earlier kind of got to me. For the most part, I manage to get through my days without thinking about what I’m missing, but lately, I can’t seem to stop. I don’t know what’s different, but I’ve been walking around in a funk for weeks.”
Instead of saying anything, he rubs his thumb over the back of my hand, encouraging me to go on.
“I’m lonely,” I practically choke. I’m simultaneously embarrassed and relieved to admit that out loud to someone who cares. “Iwantto share my life with someone—the right someone this time around. But so far, he hasn’t shown up, and even if he did, I wouldn’t have the first clue anymore how to be with a man. I just feel so … stuck, you know? I’ve been trapped in this place in my life for so long, I don’t know how to move forward. Does that make sense?”
He nods slowly. “I know it’s not the same, but for the last couple of years, I’ve felt a lot like that. I woke up every day and did what was expected of me, but it all felt wrong. After a while it just started eating away at me until I felt that if I didn’t make a drastic change, I was going to explode.”
“What finally made you decide to take a break?”
“One of my clients said something to me that really hit home. I thought I’d been hiding my dissatisfaction well, but she noticed. She told me that being chronically miserable is life’s way of telling you that you need to make a change. She said the only way to do that is to figure out what’s missing.” He pauses momentarily before adding, “To put it simply, any happiness in my career was missing. It took me nearly a year to get my sabbatical sorted out, but here I am.”
