Page 63 of Chocolate Cherry Cabin

“Well, life is unexpected and sometimes...things happen.”

“Things happen?”

“Yeah. You know. Out of the blue.”

“Out of the blue.” His brow furrowed. “Whatisgoing on?”

“Louis Bellmore and I might be becoming friends. He—” Hannah caught a glimpse of Thomas, who was reading his map, and realized she couldn’t relay the story of Louis dressing up as Santa. Her little boy still held an impressive and tenuous belief in the existence of Santa Claus. Any day that bubble would burst, but she didn’t want to be the one responsible.

Hannah opened her mouth to mention the plane ride instead, but that felt like the date it had become. Calvin had enjoyed the odd romantic outing himself in the past year, but Hannah felt the need to hold her relationship status close to her chest for some reason.

“I’ll admit that for a moment I thought the rumors were true,” he was saying.

Hannah felt her face heat up and she debated pretending there was a bad connection and hanging up.

“But seriously? That’s as crazy as the one about you going back to school.” He laughed. “You were so ready to get out of there when I finished my degree that you didn’t even finish yours.”

“Yeah. Crazy, isn’t it?” Her face grew even hotter. She hated the Sweetheart Creek grapevine right now. Not only had her mom called her up, all confused about why she was insisting on becoming a career woman, but the rumor of her application had made it all the way to France in less than two days. How had she been so naive as to believe that she could wait to discuss this with Calvin in person?

It was like expecting her mother to understand. She was still unconvinced the divorce was necessary, and as for Hannah wanting her own financial independence, her mom had asked why she couldn’t just “hold Calvin to his financial commitments” and be a stay-at-home mom like she’d always wanted.

But had she always wanted that? Yes, for a while. But she hadn’t envisioned it being forever. And one day Calvin might have two families to support, or might be downsized at work. Hannah needed her own money. She needed to be able to move on.

“Wait. Is it true about school?” Calvin was staring at her, his face slightly pale in the December morning light.

“Um, maybe.” She scrunched her nose, trying not to cringe. “I haven’t totally decided. I’ve only just applied.”

“I thought we were building toward a move to Paris.” There was impatience and anger in his tone, to which Thomas was thankfully oblivious. Wade, probably not so much. Being two years older he caught a lot of things Thomas didn’t.

Her youngest held his map in front of the screen, blocking her view of Calvin. “There was a statue of a man with a sword and another one of a lady,” Thomas announced. “Her one private was showing.” He lowered the map to gesture to his chest, and beside him Wade giggled.

“Thomas, I need to chat with your dad.”

Ignoring her request, he continued pointing out various things on the map as he chattered a mile a minute. “At the museum there were bathrooms everywhere. And ice cream and doughnuts, but Dad told me only one treat so I had an ice cream, but Gammy bought me a doughnut later because she didn’t know. And there was a bench outside, with ducks on a pond. A lady let me feed them her pretzel.”

“None of this is for certain yet, Calvin,” Hannah said, after giving Thomas a quick hum of acknowledgment. “France and...everything.” She waved a hand and slid her admission notes farther away.

“I thought we were on the same team. I thought we had a plan.”

“We are! We do. I can take these courses anywhere.” At least the first ones. “I could even study while sitting on that bench feeding the ducks a pretzel.”

“A man said it was bad for the ducks, but I’d already given it to them,” Thomas chimed in.

“An American education degree will be worthless in France. It’s a completely different system.” Calvin’s voice was low and urgent. “You don’t need a degree to work where you are, and we’re both still paying off our student loans from before.”

“I thought you’d like the idea of me expanding my financial independence. Andmystudent loans are almost gone.” That was one benefit of working so hard during school, as well as taking only a few classes.

“I take good care of you and the boys,” he said. “I’m good about flexing my schedule or calling my mom to help us when Edith drops a shift in your lap, but that’s forwork.”

“And I appreciate that.”

“There’s no need to change things. They’re working fine.”

Hannah sucked in a deep breath and held it to a count of five. She released it and sucked in a second one.

“I don’t want to fight, Hannah.” Calvin shook his head as though disappointed.

He wanted her to roll over. Withdraw from the program and lose the application fee, because it was inconvenient for him. Her choice could put them on separate pages in terms of their goals, and could even make him appear selfish if he moved them all to France when she wanted to go back to school.

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