been away for Christmas. And we’ll be staying in a tree house, just the two of us. It really is a second honeymoon.” There was a pause, and then a sound of rustling as her mother shifted closer to Rosie’s father. “You’re still handsome, Nick. Have I told you that lately?”
Rosie wished her mother would go back to sleep. Unfortunately, the short nap seemed to have invigorated her and she maintained a running commentary.
“I’ve never seen mountains this high. And the snow is so smooth and perfect on that field over there it reminds me of my Christmas cake.”
Rosie felt a wave of nostalgia. She wouldn’t be eating her mother’s Christmas cake this year. And what about next year? She didn’t know. That was one of the details she and Dan still needed to work out together. That and so many others.
She stared out the window as Dan took the sharp turn that led up the wide tree-lined driveway leading to Snowfall Lodge. Snow lay in soft mounds, blurring the edges of the road.
“Rosie tells me you work in academic publishing, Maggie.” Dan slowed. “That must be interesting. Do you enjoy it?”
“No. If you want the truth, I find it intensely boring,” her mother said. “I work in a quiet office, with quiet people, doing the same quiet thing I’ve done forever. I hate it.”
There was silence.
Rosie turned her head and saw a deep furrow appear on her father’s brow. He seemed as shocked as she was.
Even Dan, something of a conversational expert, seemed to struggle with a suitable response.
Rosie felt as if her world had shifted a little. “You hate your job, Mum? Really?”
“Why is that so surprising? Not everyone is lucky enough to do a job they’re passionate about. Sometimes you fall into something and before you know it you’re still there twenty years later.”
“I—I thought you loved your work.”
“It’s been perfectly fine. Ideal in many ways, because they were flexible about letting me work from home whenever you were sick which was important. It was a practical choice. I’m not the first woman in the world to make a practical choice.”
The practical choice sounded depressingly uninspiring.
Rosie felt a twinge of guilt.
Was this her fault? She knew that her constant emergency trips to the hospital had put pressure on the whole family but she’d never considered that her mother might have stayed in the job because it made it easier to care for a sick child.
“Why haven’t you talked about this before?”
“I don’t think anyone ever asked. Dan’s the first. His emotional intelligence is clearly as well developed as his muscles.”
Of course they’d asked about her job. For years when she’d been living at home, Rosie had asked how was your day?
But how had her mother answered? She couldn’t remember.
She was sure she’d never heard her say that she hated her job, but maybe there had been subtle hints that she’d missed. Maybe she’d heard a polite response and not recognized it as that. She hadn’t looked deeper, but that was because it had never occurred to her that her mother didn’t like her job. Why would it? If you didn’t like something, you said so. Her mother never complained about anything. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, Rosie had assumed she loved her life.
Growing up, all her friends had envied Rosie her mother. Maggie was always there to greet her after school with hugs and fresh wholesome food. She adjusted her hours to fit around whatever family crisis—usually of Rosie’s making—happened to assail the inhabitants of Honeysuckle Cottage at any point in time.
When Katie had developed flu a few days before her exams for medical school, it was their mother who had taken time off and driven her to the exam, plied her full of medication, and picked her up afterward. It was their mother who had slept in a chair by Rosie’s side when she was in the hospital, and her mother who had encouraged her from the sidelines when she played sports.
Rosie realized she’d never seen her father do any of that, and until this moment that had never even struck her as odd.
Her father had always seemed like an exciting figure to her. He was energetic, passionate and often elusive, disappearing from their lives for weeks and sometimes months at a time and then reappearing with exotic gifts and stories of sandstorms and badly behaved camels. This being before mobile phones, they often wouldn’t receive more than a single postcard during the