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“Why do I have the feeling Charity Ardmore had something to do with that?” his mother asked.
“Charity Ardmore,” his dad commented. “I haven’t heard that name in a while.”
How could his mom possibly know who decorated the library interior? She was deliberately not plugged into what was going on in this town. When he needed her to be clueless, she was a town expert, apparently.
“Yes, I ran into her at the diner.” Nic shrugged. “She said she was doing the work pro bono. I said I’d help. I got back in time to get my work done before everyone went home for the day.”
Nobody had said a word about him shirking off his work duties to hang out with Charity. They didn’t have to. He felt guilty enough.
“You’ve been working around the clock for years at that place,” his mom said. “Now that you don’t have anything tying you to Lexington, you should look for work somewhere else.”
His dad looked over at his mom, a teasing glint in his eye. “Maybe somewhere a little closer to Misty Mountain?”
Yeah, they both had his mom’s number on that. She was always angling for him to move home. His sister got away with it because her work required her to be close to Washington DC. But his mom seemed to think he might someday change his stance on living here.
“I like Lexington,” he said, aware of the defensiveness in his own tone. “Besides, everyone I knew here in Misty Mountain moved away a long time ago.”
Now his mother was the one with a teasing glint in her eye. “Not everyone.”
Yeah, he got it. Charity Ardmore was still in town. And if he moved back, he could date her. They could get married and settle down in a house and have salad night on Monday nights, meatloaf on Tuesdays, and so on. Maybe they’d even get wild and crazy and take a vacation outside of this region of the country. His parents never had.
“I tell you, I wouldn’t have wanted to run my practice anywhere else,” Nic’s dad said. “I’ve been a pediatrician since before you kids were born. Now I’m seeing the babies of the babies I saw when you were kids.”
He said that like it was a good thing, and to him, it definitely was. But one thing Nic loved about his life was there were possibilities. He might not be in his dream job right now, but he loved the work, and he could always pivot to something else and work anywhere he wanted. Nothing was tying him to any specific town.
“Maybe that’s the point,” Nic said. Both his parents paused eating to look at him. He rushed to clarify. “Nothing’s tying me to Lexington. I could live anywhere. That wouldn’t be the case if I settled in a small town like this. When you stay here as an adult, it’s a lifelong commitment.”
“Why, that’s not true,” his mother said. “People move away from Misty Mountain all the time. You just said yourself most of the people you knew are gone.”
“The kids move,” he said. “How many people who get married and have their kids here leave?”
His mom opened her mouth, then looked over at his dad. He’d be the one who knew better than she would. But Nic’s dad simply stared straight ahead, fork held above his plate.
“Why would anybody want to leave?” his mother finally said when his dad couldn’t seem to come up with any examples. “You have everything you need right here.”
“You leave all the time,” Nic pointed out. “Sawyerville has bigger grocery stores, all the retail shops you love, and need I point out that you can’t have anything delivered here but pizza?”
“I get things delivered here all the time.” His mom pointed in the general direction of the front door. “I order them online, and they’re on the front porch the next day.”
Yeah, that wasn’t what he was talking about, and she knew it. “I just can’t imagine living in one place all my life.” He shrugged. “It works for some people. Obviously, you two love it. It’s just not the right fit for me.”
There. He’d said it. It was the same thing he’d felt all his life, but he’d never put it into words. Not to his parents, anyway. The idea of getting stuck anywhere, whether it was Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, or Timbuktu, made him immediately claustrophobic.
He didn’t miss the look his mom and dad swapped before going back to eating. He was trying to figure out a way to change the subject when he felt his phone buzz in his sweatpants pocket. He’d changed into them as soon as he’d gotten back from helping Charity at the library.
“Oh.” He set his fork down and reached into his pocket. “That might be the work email I’ve been expecting.”
But when he glanced at the phone, it wasn’t a notification from the irrigation specialist they’d hired to come out and rework their equipment. No, it was a text from a name he hadn’t seen on his phone in a while. Eight years, to be exact. A name he’d never erased from his contacts—mostly because he never erased anyone from his contacts.
You up for caroling?Charity asked.
“Christmas caroling?” he asked out loud.
“Oh, yeah,” his dad said. “That’s tonight. The wife of the church pastor who handles it all is one of my patients. The carolers meet in the parking lot at the First Baptist Church. You should go do that.”
“You used to go caroling when you were a kid,” his mother remembered. She had a smile on her face before she covered her mouth with a napkin to wipe. “It was always so much fun.”
His mom had never gone with him, so how would she know? She dropped him and his sister off at the parking lot and picked them up when it was over, along with the dozens of other parents who did the same.
