Page 61 of Love Hollow at Last
“Well, I was going to wait until you started officially dating.Then when that didn’t happen, I kept quiet.”
Aya gave a sad smile.“I didn’t want to risk all that, you know?At least, not until prom night.But really, not even then.”
“With what happened in your parents’ marriage, I don’t blame you.”
Aya pushed the noodles aside.“I don’t think anyone has a perfect marriage.But Mom and Daddy?”
“No,” said Emi.“That’s not what I’m saying.Your lives were ripped apart when he died.I can imagine how hard it would be to…”
Aya frowned.“What?To have a good life?”
Emi took a sip of her coconut water.“That’s not what I said.”
Several more moments went by.Anger bubbled up within Aya then fizzled out almost as quickly.It was something Emi had told her about—noticing emotions, naming them, then letting them go.Apparently, according to Emi, there were randomized controlled trials.Doctors dispensed advice like that to their patients, though fortunately, Aya had never been forced to endure a lecture on mindfulness by some guru in a white coat.Throughout her life, Aya had been suspicious of the American advice to express emotions.In her household, she had her mother and her younger sisters around.If she didn’t hold it together, who knew what would happen to them.
But she had started to practice, very occasionally, at Emi’s urging.After all, she had to do something in exchange for the fancy guest room, the pool, and the excellent food that she picked at.
“So you think I didn’t want to fall in love because I was scared that Noah would leave me?Because I felt like, by dying, my dad had abandoned us?”Aya’s throat closed as she said it.“That sounds like some crazy psychobabble to me,” she managed.
“Look,” said Emi.“I don’t want to blame you.Or Noah.But if you’re already mad at me, I did have one question.”
Aya looked her in the eye.“What’s that?”
“What are you going to do with the rest of your life?”
52
Aya
Aya took a pile of papers home for Christmas.She’d been warned by her colleagues.“Always have due dates after the holidays,” they’d said.“That way, you can enjoy the time off without having stacks of papers to grade.”According to them, it was one of the perks of the quarter system, which meant their grades weren’t due until the second week of January.
But Aya hadn’t listened.Freshmen—or first-year students, as she was supposed to call them—were such novices in terms of both their writing and their critical analysis.And they seemed to think Aya wouldn’t be able to pick out the essays that had been written by machines.She’d taken to having the students write an essay each day during class time.The last twenty minutes of class were set aside for the students to make the revisions she suggested in the margins of the essays they had written the class before.It meant that there was very little time for lecturing, but Aya found that she didn’t mind.The students were more engaged for the fifteen minutes she spent speaking, as they knew they had to write about the topic right after.And her methods, though unorthodox, seemed to be working.Her students were getting more interested in primary sources, and their arguments finally had some specificity.It had been weeks since any of them tried to start an essay by quoting the dictionary definition of a historical term.
But it did mean that Aya had so many essays to get through on her flights that she couldn’t even think about Christmas in Love Hollow until Martha picked her up at the airport.
“Don’t drive on the left,” Aya said as she hugged her sister.Martha had gone to Japan to teach English after college and never left.
“Daijoubu, yo,” teased Martha.“I’ll do half and half.I’ll start by driving on the left but only for a few miles.”
“How are you even driving me anyway?”grumbled Aya.“Aren’t you too jet-lagged?”
Martha scoffed.Normally, her voice was a little more high-pitched than Twyla’s, a strange difference that had only been accentuated by Martha’s time in Japan.But when she was sarcastic, she sounded just like her twin.“I’ve been home for ten days, and I was in recital mode half the time.”
Aya squirmed.She could have come home well before Christmas Eve if she hadn’t had so much work to do on her dissertation.
“Sorry I missed it.”
Martha grinned.“Twy and I had it covered.And our duetkilled.That’s why I got this haircut.”
She pushed at her cute little bob.In Love Hollow, Martha and Twyla could have passed for about fourteen with that hair.In Japan, Aya guessed that people were probably much better at guessing her sister’s real age.
“You really need to stop trying to trick those poor kids, Marty.”
“But it’ssofun.What’s the point of having an identical twin if you never use it to prank anyone?”
The landscape was beautiful, fresh snow under a blue sky.Aya drank it in through the car windows.“Big-sky country,” she murmured.
Martha laughed.“Yeah, it’s big.I think Montana got the slogan, though, not Idaho.”
