without a blink of an eye? Absolutely. Was she good at being a mother?
She hoped so.
But she could be good at other things too.
She’d fallen into public relations after college because she was good at writing, and she’d taken the job seriously, applied herself, and moved up at the firm. Before the twins were born, Evan had received a big promotion, too good to turn down, that required a lot of travel. It would make no sense for them to both work, and she couldn’t scale down her hours and still commute to the city. And Evan was right: she wanted to be home with the girls. She wanted to give them a different kind of childhood than she’d had. She didn’t want to just supervise, she wanted to engage. Take the classes that required participation, not drop-off. Bake the cookies for the bake sale, not pick up something at the store.
And while she had been good at her career, she couldn’t say that she longed to go back to it, specifically. What she longed for was the feeling it gave her.
The feeling she had finally admitted she was now lacking by giving it up.
Unlike her sisters, she’d never had any hobbies or passions. Even as children, Gemma had her writing and Ellie had her painting. Hope had instead been the neighborhood babysitter, the responsible teen on the block who could wrestle three kids without complaint, and entertain them, too, not just flick on the television and raid the pantry. She collected her earnings at the end of the evening and deposited it into the high-interest savings account her father had set up for her. Ellie, on the other hand, spent all her birthday money on toys and candy within days of receiving it, seeming to feel that she almost wouldn’t be satisfied until every last penny was gone.
Hope had interests: she liked to read, and she liked her tennis lessons. She could play the piano and she maintained a strong grade-point average. But it was Gemma and Ellie who were exceptional.
She’d never given that much thought. Until now. And now, she was, well, she was jealous, she realized. Jealous that her sisters knew who they were and that she didn’t.
“Okay, girls,” she said wearily, when Rose started tossing sand into the air, causing it to fall like rain onto Victoria’s head. “Time for a nap.”
“No!” came the inevitable protests, and she was reminded again that the glorious days of naps were coming to an end. Then what? Usually she used those two precious hours to meal prep for dinner, straighten the house, and pick up all the toys that had been dumped all over the living room that morning even though she knew that they would be upturned again before evening. Those two hours were the only time in her entire day, other than after eight, when she was too tired to do much more than sip a glass of wine and zone out in front of reality television, when the house was quiet. And in the evenings, she had to shift her attention from the girls to Evan, of course, to go from serving her children to serving her husband. To hear the latest updates about work, to give her insight, to be supportive.
Was it so wrong to want something, anything, for herself? To have her own day to talk about, one that didn’t revolve around playground happenings?
The downside of naptime on Evening Island was that she was bound to the house, and the house was not hers, much as she’d tried, with some little touches like colorful throw pillows to replace the faded floral ones that Gran had kept on the patio furniture all those years, and the lanterns and flowers, and fresh linens that she’d bought for all of their beds, even if Ellie did look more disturbed than grateful.
Gemma’s announcement hadn’t helped matters, she thought, as she gathered all the toys into her canvas beach tote. She’d had the sense to pack it, and the toys were faded remnants of her own childhood, found in the hall closet on the top shelf, a relic from another era, much like the old wicker furniture on the porch, or the juice glasses that still bore the faded print of lilacs on the edges. She hadn’t even thought of those in so many years, but once she saw them again, she was overwhelmed with nostalgia and longing, for another time, another place. Another feeling.
She looked back up at