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“I was a crazy mom who showed up to town with a baby on my hip.”
My dad leans in to look at the board. “And thank God you did, because look how lucky we were to live a blessed life.”
Mom laughs. “Oh boy, he’s being sentimental. Get ready, sweetie.”
“Aren’t you surprised at the board?” I ask.
My dad huffs. “How else would they keep it all straight? They were eighty-year-old matchmakers.”
“But what if they hadn’t interfered? Maybe you and Mom wouldn’t have—”
My dad shakes his head. “No, Calista. They helped, don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t fall in love with your mom because of my grandma. She probably helped us get out of our own way though, like we’re about to do for you right now.”
I frown.
My mom places the board on the coffee table, her hand running over the picture of her with me at eighteen months on her hip. A tear slips down her cheek.
“What do you mean? Why are you crying, Mom?”
“Sit down,” my dad says.
I sit on the couch beside my mom, and my dad takes a seat on the opposite side of her.
“Your mom and I always wanted to let you all make your own decisions. We wanted you to make your own mistakes and find solutions to them, but you’re on a record player that’s stuck on the same verse, not realizing you have the power to move the needle.”
Mom puts her hand on my dad’s knee. “Do you love him, Calista?”
“Rylan?”
She gives me a look as though wondering how I could think she meant anyone else.
“Yeah.” My voice cracks.
“Let us tell you a story then,” my dad says. “When your mom came here, she didn’t know if this was where she wanted to live. Lake Starlight is drastically different than Seattle. I’d just opened my restaurant and returned from Europe to restart my life here. I’m fortunate your mom fell in love with our small town and wanted to stay. But we’re also lucky that neither of our jobs took away our choice.”
I shake my head. “I can’t.”
“You can,” my mom says. “You’re thirty, Calista, and you’ve been babied enough on your injury. You’ve had time to mourn your career, and now it’s time to go out there and live your life again. I don’t care if it’s with Rylan or not, but you are not going to hide in this town doing your family’s bookkeeping and taxes for the rest of your life.”
“Jeez, Mom,” I say.
She shakes her head. “You’re just letting the years waste away. I thought when Rylan came back and got you to teach his niece soccer, it would open your heart again. But damn it, you seem almost happy to keep it stitched twice to keep people out.”
She’s wrong, because no matter how hard I try, Rylan always finds an opening to seep into. “That’s not it.”
“Then enlighten me.” She crosses her legs and waits for me to answer. I open my mouth and shut it.
“Exactly. With commitment to someone comes sacrifice. If you love him like you say you do, like I think you do, I see no reason why you can’t suck up a couple years in Chicago while he finishes his career. If you don’t love him enough to do that, then I have news for you, sweetie—you don’t really love him.”
I blink a few times. My mom isn’t usually so brutal or blunt. “My career ended in a blink. I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t want it to end. It wasn’t my choice.” Tears spring from my eyes again.
She wraps her arm around my shoulders. “It doesn’t have to be your only dream, baby. I’m not sitting here saying it doesn’t suck what happened to you. After all the years you put into it, and it ends that way. And it sucks that the man you love most in this world—”
My dad clears his throat, and we laugh.
“I’m not joking. She loves me more than him, right?” Dad eyes me, and I give him a soft smile.
Mom says, “It sucks that he plays soccer professionally. But he also wouldn’t be the love of your life—”
