“And this Fletcher guy was rude to you?” I’d mentioned that Ronan hadn’t exactly been warm in welcoming me or making me feel at ease, and she hadn’t been able to let the matter drop. For three days I’d been telling her the same story over and over again, and her outrage hadn’t dissipated a single iota. “And after that ridiculously long flight, too. I tell you, these big business guys in big cities, they’re all the same. They must be the absolute worst in New York, though. The height of arrogance. Never mind, baby. You’ll find work closer to home. You’ll be able to come back to the South Bay in the evenings. And your father and I will be just fine, don’t worry about us.”
I was worried, though. I’d been worrying non-stop for the past year and no amount of plotting and planning appeared to be helping the situation. I’d seen the stack of envelopes on the kitchen counter this morning, all marked with “Final Notice” or “Passed Due.” Mom had swept them deftly into the cutlery drawer when she noticed me helping myself to cereal, but she wasn’t that stealthy a woman. There had been at least four envelopes there.
“I know, Mom. It’s not a big deal. I would never have cut it on a tiny island, anyway. I would have gone crazy, especially if I couldn’t even call you guys whenever I wanted to. The time difference would have been awful.” It was only three hours, but with their busy schedule and my own, I would have missed my opportunity to talk to them most of the time.
“Ophelia?” Mom called. “While it’s quiet, would you mind running upstairs to the office and seeing if there’s any word from Waylan’s? We were supposed to get a delivery this morning and nothing’s shown up yet.”
“Sure thing.” Aside from the couple sitting at the table by the window, the restaurant was empty and lunch service was over. I had a few minutes to leave the floor, so I did as she asked, jogging up the stairs to check the online bookings and listen to the messages on the answering machine. There were seven new messages waiting. I hit the play button, sitting myself down in front of the prehistoric computer my Dad refused to get rid of, and the entire time the machine clicked through the messages (a call center, wondering if we want to renew our home owner’s insurance; Aunt Simone, wanting Mom to call her back when she had a second; croaky, hoarse sounding old Mr. Robson, confirming the table for tomorrow night that he and his wife always reserved on a Sunday) I was holding my breath, waiting to hear that cool, calm voice with the strange lilt to it, telling me in no uncertain terms that I hadn’t gotten the job, and I needn’t bother googling Causeway Island anymore.
The message never came, though. That was probably the most frustrating part. I knew I hadn’t gotten the job, but it would have been nice to be put out of my misery. It seemed highly irregular that Ronan Fletcher hadn’t even had one of his receptionists call or even email to let me know that someone else had filled the position. I didn’t care. I didn’t. At least that’s what I kept telling myself. If I didn’t recite to myself constantly that I didn’t need that particular job, then my heart rate kept accelerating at the prospect of earning a hundred thousand dollars in a short six-month period, and I was on the verge of weeping at the missed opportunity. There were no messages in the email from Waylan’s about our missing delivery. While I was there, I checked my personal email account to see if I had actually received something from the Fletcher Corporation there, but my inbox was notably empty.
Well, shit.
Damn Ronan Fletcher. Damn him for tempting me with all that money. Somehow he’d made me want a job I’d never have even truly considered before. I hadn’t been lying earlier; I really would go crazy on a tiny little island, and the distance between Maine and California would have been brutal, but it would only have been for six months. I could have done it. I could have, if I’d really tried.
******
My car was in the shop and hadn’t been ready to collect when I’d returned from New York, so Dad drove us all home in the dusty, beaten-up 4Runner he’d had since I was in high school. Admittedly, the thing was still running perfectly, so there was no reason for him to replace it. Still, Dad had a thing about new technology, new cars, new anything. If it meant he’d have to learn how to navigate his way around some new system or software, he wasn’t having any part of it. Not unless he absolutely had to. I sat in the back behind Mom, traveling the memorized route back to the house—a route so familiar and rote to me that the houses and gardens we passed felt like they had probably been there since the dawn of time, nothing ever changing, nothing ever evolving or growing, and I felt suddenly cut adrift. This was the life I’d had fifteen years ago. Yes, the sound of Mom and Dad bickering affectionately every morning over breakfast made me feel safe and warm, but the ritual of it all, working at the restaurant, going to sleep in the twin bed Mom had bought me for my twelfth birthday, shopping at the Save & Weigh and taking Mrs. Freeman’s newspaper up her drive to her every morning, as I had done ever since she’d had her hip replacement surgery back in 2003, it all felt needlessly crushing, to the point where I felt like I couldn’t breathe.