Page 73 of Austin
“After the other two candidates are interviewed and the committee meets again.” She sipped her tea. “But one thing I can promise you—if I go back to Reno, I won’t be keeping secrets.” No big ones anyway.
“Your life is your own, Kristen.” Her mom set down the cup and leaned her forearms on the table, looking like she had something important to say, so Kristen put down her cup, too. “When you told us about your job, I was stunned, because you’ve never kept anything from us…” Her mom smiled in a reminiscent way. “Well, nothing that someone else didn’t tell us.”
The joys of living in a small town.
“But after I got over the shock, I was kind of relieved.”
“About what?” Kristen asked, shocked.
“You’d finally broken a rule.”
Not even close to what she’d thought was coming. “I didn’t break a rule. I broke trust.”
Her mom smiled a little. “You did. But you also went a little renegade.”
Kristen frowned at her.
Her mom reached for her teacup. “Sometimes your perfectionism is over the top. Even for being your father’s daughter. It has to be exhausting.”
Kristen wanted to argue. Wanted to tell her that she wasn’t that much of a perfectionist…but she was. There was no way around that. “Kind of hard to fight one’s true nature.”
Her mother’s expression grew serious. “I know. And I’m not asking you to fight your true nature…I’m just asking you to give yourself a break.”
Kristen stared at her own cup, taking in the delicate yellow rose pattern she’d always loved. “I’m not that hard on myself.” The words felt like a lie—probably because they were.
She dropped her head back, her hands still on her teacup. Life was so much simpler when her deeply engrained strategies not only worked, but worked well, too. She was at the point now where she didn’t know what worked.
Coming up with new strategies was as exhausting as trying to make everything perfect.
Her mom touched her hand and Kristen let go of the teacup and squeezed her mother’s fingers. “I’m feeling my way along, Mom. Somewhere along the line, some of the rules changed…or maybe they were never there.” Maybe they were all in her head, the ‘rules’ that helped her conquer each new challenge.
“Tackling life is hard, because it is ever changing. Being rigid helps in some areas, not so much in others.”
“Excellent,” Kristen said dryly.
Her mother laughed. “I occasionally have this conversation with your father, too.”
“But not Whitney?”
Her mom gave a small snort. “No.”
Her sister wasn’t a perfectionist. She attacked life with more of a let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may attitude that Kristen couldn’t help but envy. “Iamloosening up.”
The flat-out truth, however, she would not be sharing Austin’s role in the ‘loosening’ with her mother. Some things were best left unsaid.
“If you can find a middle ground, I think you’ll find life less stressful.”
Kristen gave a small laugh. “I’ll work on it?” She was working on it, but like rebuilding trust it was a slow process.
“Tell me about Austin.”
Kristen froze. She hadn’t kept the fact that she was keeping company with Austin a secret, but she hadn’t expected her mom to ask questions.
“He’s good for me,” she finally said. “He’s teaching me to bend some rules.”
Her mother laughed. “Good. Just…don’t go overboard. I want you to loosen up, but I don’t want two Whitneys on my hands.”
*
