Page 27 of Forever Full Circle
When Charlotte crawled over and pulled herself up on the arm of Emily’s chair, offering Emily a chewed-on stuffie, Patricia stood. “I should go. I promised Cassie we could go antiquing today.” She hesitated, then said, “I’ll call you tonight, okay?”
Emily nodded as she picked Charlotte up, snuggling her close, her body suddenly heavy with exhaustion. “Okay.”
At the back door, Patricia paused and turned. “You’re stronger than you think, Emily. I’m not sure you got that fromme, but I’m glad you have it.” She left, this time for good, her footsteps fading into the house.
Emily didn’t know what would happen next—whether the money would work out from her mom, whether Daniel would agree to go for it, whether Roy would be here to see the lighthouse, whether she could keep any of the things she loved from slipping away.
But she believed more now that she could try.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
That evening, the kitchen in the inn’s family suite was a mosaic of leftovers. Emily didn’t have the energy for dinner, and Daniel was running late from work in town. But she and Charlotte and Chantelle had made do with cold pizza, leftover pasta salad, and prepackaged cupcakes, washed down with strawberry milk.
Now, Chantelle sat at the far corner of the dining table bench, body angled away as she flicked a blue guitar pick end over end across the table. She wore a hoodie three sizes too big, sleeves swallowing her hands, and had her legs tucked up under her. Her left sock was inside out. Her hair was out of its usual ponytail, a drifting curtain over one eye. She looked every bit the child she was—except for the way her jaw was set, stubborn and a little sad, like she’d taken up residence in her own mind and was determined not to be evicted.
We’ve all got things on our minds, Emily thought.
She shifted, trying to find a position that didn’t make her lower back ache. The baby was too small to show, but her body had already started sending signals: sit like this, not like that, eat now or you’ll regret it in an hour. She reached for the half-cold mug of herbal tea at her side, the rim still faintly sticky with sugar. Her hand landed next to a smear of tomato sauce, and she wiped it away with the side of her thumb before taking a careful sip.
The guitar pick made another arc, skittering to a stop at the edge of the salt shaker.
Emily pushed herself up, the bench’s edge scraping a note along the tile, and gestured toward the wide window seat at the bay window nearby. The harbor was a splotch of blue and pewterbeyond the glass, the boats at their moorings toy-sized from here.
“Come here, honey,” Emily said, patting the seat beside her as she settled.
Chantelle followed, clutching her knees to her chest. She pressed her forehead to the glass, leaving a faint smear. “What?”
Emily took a second to organize her words. The old her would have scheduled the conversation, written out bullet points, anticipated every possible outcome. Now, she just breathed in the moment.
“I haven’t told you everything about living in New York,” Emily said. “It was… a lot.” She tried to conjure the feeling, the blocky skyline and the echo of shoes on wet pavement, the endless chase of success or recognition. “I worked really hard. I kept thinking, if I could just do more, make a bigger splash, I’d finally be happy.”
She watched her daughter absorb this; eyes fixed on the boats.
“The thing is,” Emily continued, “it was never enough. No matter how well I did, there was always something missing. Sometimes I wonder if I focused too much on work and missed out on relationships that mattered. Friends. Family.”
Chantelle snuck a look, her hair falling away from her face. “You have friends here. And family.”
Emily smiled, acknowledging the small truth of it. “I do. But I had to start over. And I still think about the people I left behind. Auntie Amy came, thank goodness.”
Another silence. Emily could almost hear the gears turning in her daughter’s head.
“I’m not saying Boston is like me running to New York,” Emily said. “If you want something—really want it—sometimes you have to risk being uncomfortable for a while. But ifyou’re going to chase something that will take you away from somewhere you’re already happy, don’t go. That’s okay, too.”
Chantelle twisted a loose thread in her hoodie, unwinding it until it curled around her finger. “What if I want both?” she said, barely above a whisper.
“Then we find a way to make that work.”
For a while, they just watched the water. The window glass reflected them, two faces framed by dusk and indecision.
Chantelle broke the silence. “Do you want to hear something kind of dumb?”
“Always.”
“I’ve been recording my songs. Like, on my phone. I have this account—don’t worry, I never show my face, just my guitar—where I post them. People comment and stuff. Sometimes they say nice things.”
Emily’s jaw went slack, but she forced herself not to overreact. “You’ve been putting your music out there?”
Chantelle’s ears turned pink. “Not, like, on YouTube or anything. It’s just a site where musicians share original stuff. But… yeah. Some of the people are really good. Better than me, even. They help me fix my lyrics or tell me what chords sound wrong.”
