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As she begrudgingly maintained the speed limit, she ran over her mom’s words again in her head. With every iteration, she got more worked up. Wasn’t it bad enough that her mom had pressured her into going into accounting in the first place?
“Think about your future,” Zoe mumbled, imitating her mother’s voice. “You want good job, right?”
Fat lot of good the accounting degree had done her in that respect.
To be fair, Zoe hadn’t exactly had a better idea about what to do with her life. But it would have been nice to have had some options other than doctor, lawyer, or bean counter.
She chewed on the inside of her lip. At a stoplight, she impulsively hit the button on the dashboard to make a call.
Her sister, Lian, picked up on the second ring. Long and drawn out, her voice came out over the car’s tinny speakers. “Yes?”
“How did you know what you wanted to do with your life?”
“Well, hello to you, too.”
“I’m serious,” Zoe insisted.
Despite facing more or less the same pressure from their mother, Lian had forged her own path. She had a job as a teacher in the next town over, with a 401(k) and health insurance and everything and an apartment where no one harassed her every time she tried to get out the door.
Basically, living the dream.
“I can tell,” Lian said dryly. There were rustling noises in the background. “Give me a second to think.”
Zoe didn’t have a second. The drive to Harvest Home took only ten minutes, and she’d squandered at least seven of them stewing. “I mean, you must have felt pretty strongly about it. Goodness knows it wasn’t Mom’s idea.”
Lian laughed. “No, that it was not.” She hummed in thought, then said, “I guess… When you know, you justknow. You know?”
“Clearly not.” Zoe groaned.
“Sorry, that’s what I’ve got.”
“You are so useless.”
“Uh-huh. Which is why you always call me first when you’re stuck.”
“I’m not stuck.” Okay, she was. Kind of.
She just didn’t know what to do with her life or how to get her mother off her back. But other than that, she was fine.
No, she hadn’t made any progress on Operation: Seduce Devin Until He Breaks, but she had her job at the Junebug, which was fun and paid well. Her leftover free time—when she wasn’t applying for jobs or making pointless spreadsheets for her mother—she spent at Harvest Home, and it was… well, great.
She sighed. If only she could convince Uncle Arthur to take that well-earned trip to Fiji he was always talking about and let her take over there full time. She’d miss him, sure, and it wouldn’t exactly be a fancy corporate accounting job. But if she could rustle up enough grants to pay herself a salary, even her mother couldn’t give her a hard time about that.
As she turned into Harvest Home’s parking lot, she finished up her conversation with her sister. Sherry and Tania arrived just as she was heading toward the door.
“Good afternoon, ladies,” Zoe said, swinging her hair out of her face as she found the right key.
Sherry grinned. She was an older white woman who’d been cooking for Harvest Home since Arthur had founded it back in the late nineties. “Hey, Zoe.”
“Arthur finally take a day off?” Tania asked. Tania was newer, hired when the place had expanded a few years ago, but now it was hard to imagine how they’d gotten along without her. She was Black and maybe twenty years younger than Sherry, and the two were a powerhouse team.
“Fingers crossed.”
Tania threw her head back and laughed. “I give it an hour.”
“Swear I’m going to tie that man to his recliner.” Zoe shook her head and pushed open the door.
Uncle Arthur was tireless, and getting him to take an entire day off—much less a trip to Fiji—was a rare victory. She swallowed hard. The only person she’d ever known who worked harder was her dad, and everyone knew how that had ended. If he’d rested and relaxed more, would that have prevented him from dropping dead of a heart attack at forty-eight?
