Even though she was in New Zealand in large part to train, having time away with her children was by far the greatest perk of this trip.
And Angela hadn’t seen them this excited in a long time.
“Please follow us and we’ll finish our tour at the Green Dragon, where you’ll receive a complimentary Hobbit Southfarthing beverage.” Their tour guide, Chrissy, led a group of twenty-five down the last leg of the Hobbiton Movie Set Tour—a surprise for Zach’s birthday. The tour alone cost a decent amount, not to mention flights for Angela and all three kids to Auckland, but Eva had insisted on paying, and Angela couldn’t refuse since it meant Zach got to visit the set of his favorite books turned movies.
It was just too bad Eva and Sherry couldn’t join in the fun, but her sister-in-law’s main priority was getting her ankle healed as quickly as possible. And there was no way their mother-in-law was going to leave her alone at the house to fend for herself.
“Mom, can you believe this?” Zach whispered for the thousandth time. His jaw had remained permanently locked in a position of awe as he darted from one side of the path to another among all the little hobbit holes. They were built into rolling hills, each one with grass for a roof and a squat, round wooden door. The doors displayed an assortment of earthy colors, from greens to reds, browns, yellows, and a few pops of a robin’s egg blue. Stone chimneys only slightly taller than Angela piped out faint wisps of smoke. Most of the plants in the vicinity appeared to be short, sprawling greenery.
As the tour group slowly made its way through the rest of the quaint village, Angela gathered all the kids for a quick snapshot in front of one of the homes.
Kylee motioned to her. “Mom, you get in this one too.”
Yes. Nowhere she’d rather be. Imagine if she’d said no to Eva’s crazy scheme to come to New Zealand. Where would they all be today instead? Certainly not in a place that resonated with the glory of creation all around them, the brilliant sun warming her hair, the greens so vibrant they almost looked fake, the magic of newness clustered tight around them.
The only thing that could have made today better was if Simon and his kids were here.
Stop it, Angela.
But she couldn’t help missing him, given she hadn’t seen the Kings at all in the last few weeks. That was Angela’s fault. She’d let Sherry take the kids over to hang out with Benjamin and Ella, but she hadn’t joined them.
When she wasn’t working with the kids on their schoolwork, she’d busied herself with preparing for the ultra-marathon—training sometimes twice a day, getting even more familiar with the general area where they assumed the race would be held, and contemplating the terrain. The preparation helped her feel slightly more in control of a situation that still felt so far beyond her abilities. No matter how hard they trained, this race would require everything she had and then some.
At least it provided a distraction from missing Simon.
Angela asked a woman nearby if she’d be willing to take a photo. When the woman agreed, Angela handed over her camera and hustled to join her children. She threw her arms around them, huddling her little chicks close. Lilly snuggled against her leg, Zach groaned good-naturedly, and Kylee squeezed her back. When the photos were snapped, it was almost difficult to let go.
Because it was only three weeks until the ultra-marathon. Which meant it was only about four and a half weeks until they returned to New York. To the cold weather. To forty-plus-hour weeks, if she resumed a similar schedule as before. To far less time spent with her children.
Lilly pointed to a pasture in the distance where several fluffs of white dotted the landscape. “Can we cuddle the sheep? Please, Mommy, please? The lady said we could.”
“After the tour ends, all right, baby? Chrissy said we could even help bottle-feed the baby lambs. Would you like that?”
Her youngest daughter’s face lit brighter than it did on Christmas morning—quite a feat. “Yes!”
She and Zach sped off after the tour guides, toward the only building in the vicinity that wasn’t built into a hillside. On top sat a thatched roof and five or six chimney stacks. The many round windows and doorways, in addition to the pub’s location next to a pond, made it look like something out of a storybook, a place where beefy men with swords might gather to drink from large wooden mugs of frothy beer and make merry.
“Thanks for bringing us here, Mom.” Kylee walked the compacted dirt path next to Angela. “The kids are having a blast.”
“You have Aunt Eva to thank for all of it.” Angela considered her daughter: the way she seemed to walk more upright lately, her makeup simpler, her hair in fewer ponytails and more often down and curled around her shoulders. She’d called her younger siblings “kids”—and even though Angela would have put her oldest into that category a few months ago, she couldn’t say the same now. “And how about you?”
Her daughter shrugged. “I mean, I’m not all crazy about this stuff like Zach is, but it’s pretty cool.” She peeked up at Angela. “And it’s nice to have some family time away from everything else.”
“I know I’ve spent a lot of time training lately.” While the kids’ schoolwork hadn’t necessarily suffered because of the time she spent getting ready for the ultra-marathon—Sherry had helped fill in the gaps—today was one of the first times they’d done a trip purely for pleasure in . . . well, a long time. “I’m sorry for that.”
“You don’t have to be sorry. I already told you I think it’s cool you’re running this race for Dad.”
Some members of their tour group wanted to stop for a photo op, so everyone paused to linger. Kylee leaned against a little picket fence in front of one of the hobbit homes.
Angela eyed Zach and Lilly, who hopped up and down stone steps a few yards away. Then she swung her gaze back to Kylee. A bush next to her exploded with a rainbow of flowers—violets, reds, yellows, indigos.
A rainbow . . . a promise.
And Angela had promised to walk the path toward healing with her daughter. Which meant speaking the truth. All of it. “I’m not sure I am doing it for him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Initially I came for you guys. Because I knew you needed me to work toward healing. I couldn’t seem to get out of the rut I’d fallen into after your dad died. And I was desperate enough to try anything.”
“For what it’s worth, it seems to be working.”
“Yes.” But what would happen when they went home? That was the question always burning in the back of her mind. How did she take what she’d learned—what she was still learning—and apply it to her life back home, where distractions and responsibilities would threaten to take over?
The group started moving again, and so did Kylee and Angela. They passed a tree that was larger than the other plants nearby. It seemed like the kind with roots that ran deep: strong, its trunk branching off into hundreds of limbs, each one stretching toward the sky.
“Mom, what’s life going to be like when we leave here?”
It was as if her daughter could read her mind. “I’ll have to go back to work. Beyond that, I’m not sure.”
“Are you going to work for Aunt Eva and Marc?”
“Maybe.” When her sister-in-law had originally made the offer, Angela had written it off as typical Eva—not thinking ahead, not seriously considering the consequences beforehand. But perhaps she’d been wrong.
Whatever the case, it wasn’t as if she’d be able to get a job doing something she really loved. Still, Simon’s praise about providing for the kids and his perspective on finding a gift in the unexpected had penetrated her heart as she’d thought about his words over the last several weeks. There was something to be said for living a normal life, working a normal job, and providing for her family. Not every person had to live a huge dream to find contentment.
Whatever she ended up doing, she just wanted to go in with eyes open. With purpose.
“Didn’t you want to be a doctor a long time ago? Maybe you should go back to school.”
Her daughter remembered that? “I’ve considered it, but that would mean more time away from you guys. I want to be the best mom I can.”
I also don’t know if I want it anymore.
Whoa, what? Angela’s first instinct was to erase the blasphemy from her mind—but instead, she mulled it over.
Why did the idea of being a doctor no longer seem like an unrealized pipe dream . . . and instead was more something she wouldn’t want to spend time doing?
Then she recognized a knowing. A part of herself she hadn’t listened to in a long time.
The other day when Eva had injured her ankle and Angela had assessed it, there had been no thrill in it. She was simply applying knowledge, just like she’d done every day in her office job.
However noble and worthy a pursuit, there was no added joy in the thought of becoming a physician.
Huh.
Kylee stopped walking and studied Angela. Her eyes softened. “We all know that you love us, okay? And that you’d do anything for us if we needed you to. But I think you can still be the best mom if you did something for yourself. Because, really, you following your dreams is only going to make us want to follow ours.”
Before Angela could throw her arms around her daughter, Kylee skipped ahead into the Green Dragon Inn. Angela quickly followed, and they all ordered mugs of soda at a log table overlooking the pond.
Outside the window, the broad tree she’d seen earlier stood firm despite a sudden gust of wind—bending, but not breaking.