“Oh?” Lia paused on her way through the house to look back at her daughter.
“It can wait.” Hayley passed her to get to the kitchen. “If dinner’s not for half an hour, got any munchies?”
“There’s cheese and crackers, grapes, carrot sticks. Help yourself.” Lia squeezed past her daughter, who had opened the refrigerator door to peer inside, narrowing the walking space in the already tight room. She turned the oven on to preheat and pointed out the covered dish on the middle shelf of the refrigerator. “Want to slip that in when the temp gets to three-fifty? I’m going to run upstairs.”
Lia headed to the narrow, nineteenth-century, squeaky staircase to the right of her front door, wondering once again how the original occupants had negotiated it—meaning anyone with hoop skirts or standing taller than five feet four. She ducked slightly halfway up to negotiate the landing. She also wondered what Hayley wanted to talk about, something that she wasn’t eager to jump into. Money problems? Lia shook her head. Not likely. Her daughter had landed a good job shortly after graduation, which allowed her to stay in Philadelphia, the city she’d come to love during her college years. Roommate trouble? Doubtful. She and Jessica had been friends since middle school. Lia was sure that any issue that came up would be worked out without her help.
Lia freshened up and changed out of her craft fair attire into more casual and comfortable clothes: elastic-waist pants and a loose blouse. Whatever Hayley had on her mind, Lia would simply have to wait to hear. She trotted downstairs and found her small dining table set for two with Lia’s good china.
“Is this okay?” Hayley asked. “I thought since we weren’t going out, we should still make it a special dinner.”
Lia smiled. “I haven’t had those dishes out since I moved here. It’s nice to see them again. But where did the flowers come from?”
“My car. I forgot and left them in the back. Like them?”
“They’re lovely. Thank you! You didn’t have to do that.” Lia gave her daughter a hug.
“I know,” Hayley said. “But Dad always got you flowers, didn’t he? I thought I’d keep it going.”
Lia blinked away the tears that came to her eyes at that, and she caught Hayley doing the same. Eleven months wasn’t long enough to mention Tom without feeling emotional, but it was getting easier, and Lia didn’t mind. Shedding a few tears once in a while with her daughter was probably therapeutic for them both, and when it was just the two of them, neither was embarrassed in the least.
“Well!” Lia said. “Let’s see if our dinner is ready to eat. I’m hungry!”
* * *
* * *
They lingered at the table over coffee after finishing their meal, and Lia told Hayley about the fight that had occurred between Belinda and her ex. “When it ended, everyone seemed to recover in slow motion,” she said, describing the stunned vendors.
“Freaky! Do you think he’ll really tear down the barn?” Hayley asked.
“It sounded like it, unless he was just trying to agitate Belinda.”
“Ha! It worked. But he must be a real piece of, well, you know, a real creep to do that. Good thing she got rid of him, I mean with the divorce. But what about the craft fair?”
“It’s in real jeopardy,” Lia admitted.
“Oh shoot! Your knitting booth!”
“Which would go, along with all the others, and I’d hate that. The bigger problem would be Belinda’s. But . . . ,” Lia said, pausing to drain her cup, “it’s not a done deal. Nothing’s been signed or any plans put in motion. Things could still change.” She didn’t mention Belinda’s prediction that Darren would be sorry to go down that road. Surely that came from her anger and distress and meant nothing.
“Well!” Lia said. “Enough about that. You had something you wanted to talk about?”
“Uh, yeah.” Hayley stood and began picking up plates and silverware to carry into the kitchen. “How about we go out for ice cream to top off dinner? My treat. Is that little stand open yet? We can talk on the way.”
Lia followed Hayley, carrying the cups and saucers and worrying a bit about what might be coming. But she helped load the dishwasher and wrapped up and put the leftovers away. Once her kitchen was set to rights, she threw on a light sweater as Hayley grabbed her purse before heading out.
“I love this little town,” Hayley said after they got their cones at the stand just three blocks from Lia’s house and on the edge of the town center. Licking their ice cream, they strolled on, checking out store windows. A gift shop and a clothing store sandwiched a small tea shop that was closed and dark. Those were followed by a hardware store that had interesting gadgets on display. “It’s so easy to get around. Not like Philly and all the traffic.”
“It is nice,” Lia agreed. “But Philadelphia has a lot more to get around to. Restaurants, theaters, museums.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Lia waited. After more window-shopping, Hayley said, “Mom, I’m thinking of taking some time off from work. I’d like to come back and stay a few days, if that’s all right with you.”
Uh-oh. “Of course it’s all right, Hayley. But this is sudden. Is something wrong?”
“That’s just it. I don’t know. I need to think.” She turned to Lia. “It’s my job. My so-called career. I don’t think it’s working for me.”
Not working for her. Lia could almost hear Tom’s reaction to that. Last I heard, a person worked for the job, not the other way around. But Lia took a milder tack. “What’s not working about it?” she asked. “You loved your marketing courses, and you were excited when you got the job offer.”
“I know.” Hayley dropped her unfinished cone into a trash basket. “That was then. Now I feel differently. I’m not sure anymore that it’s what I want to do for the rest of my life.”
“It’s only been, what, ten months?”
“Ten long months. Mom, I haven’t made any decisions yet. I’m not jumping into, or rather out of, anything in a rush, you know, like I used to, when I was a kid. That’s why I want the time off. To mull things over. Carefully.”
“But time off without pay, Hayley? You probably haven’t earned vacation time yet, right?”
“I have a couple of days due, and I’m willing to use them up. It’s that important to me, Mom.”
“Okay.” Thinking things over carefully was the advice she and Tom had given Hayley for years, so how could she argue? But there was so much Hayley had left unsaid—ironic for a communications major. Lia was sure there was more to the story but decided not to press her daughter. There’d be time ahead of them, opportunities for the rest to come out.