“Well, the inn isn’t a full-time job,” Violet said. “I mean, I guess it could be. But right now I do all right kind of squeezing it all in. I bake in the morning there, and do all the straightening up in the evenings. I’m there in time for check-in, because the bakery closes.”
“You work all the time,” Clara said.
“I don’t have anything else to do,” Violet said, shrugging.
“Spend more time with me?”
“I enjoy that,” Violet said. “I do. But... I dunno. I like this, too. I can’t quit the bakery. Alison needs me. I can’t even cut back.”
“Alison can hire someone else. I know that she can.”
“I don’t want her to have to do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because having a senior employee allows her to keep bringing women on that don’t have experience. You know she’s still doing that. Hiring women who have been in abusive marriages and training them. To bake, to start their own businesses. I don’t want anything to interrupt that.”
“It’s not really your responsibility, Vi.”
“I guess not. But it’s...my contribution. It matters to me.”
“One of these days, you’re going to have to do something for yourself.”
“All of this is for me,” Violet said. “I love it.”
“And are you going to live here forever, working at your stepmother’s bakery and running the bed-and-breakfast just down the road?”
“What’s wrong with that? You live on the same ranch you grew up on.”
“I know that,” Clara said. “But it’s my ranch. And... I... I love it here.”
“I love it here. Alison really gave me...so much. I can’t even explain everything that her being in my life has done for me. It’s... She gave me the skills that I needed to even have the job I do at the inn. I don’t want to just leave her.”
“There’s a certain amount of leaving that’s just normal,” Clara said. “You know that, right?”
“I do,” Violet said.
“I just worry sometimes that you’re so obsessed with being perfect that you try to do too much, and you don’t leave yourself any time...for you. Everything you do is for other people.”
“That isn’t true,” Violet said.
“When was the last time you went out?”
Violet laughed. “Where would I go out here? Ace’s bar, sure. But...it’s all the same old people.”
“Yeah, the same old people. That you went to high school with. Maybe you could make friends with them. Go on a date with someone.”
Violet pulled a face. “Profoundly not interested.”
“Look, I know all about being stuck.”
“Again, you’re still here, Clara.”
“I mean... After my brother died I was stuck. Emotionally. And I know that I’m in the same place now, physically, but I’m not emotionally. So I’m just telling you I’m responding to something that I see in you that’s...emotional.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well, it does to me. Because I’ve been through it. Okay?”