To: Stacey Lindholm

From: Dex MacLean

Date: November 16, 01:30 a.m.

Subject: Re: PSL Final Tally!

Checking my email isn’t something I usually do on faire weekends. There’s so much going on here at the grounds that email is usually a “during the week” thing. But I have to say that I like this new habit of writing to you before I go to sleep. It’s the perfect way to end my day.

Fourteen is a lot of pumpkin spice lattes. Is there maybe a support group you can join?

I had to think about that for a minute: love is a cage. I think you’re on to something, but at the same time the idea makes me sad. Something as glorious and powerful as love shouldn’t make you feel caged in. I wonder if what you’re seeing as a cage is obligation instead of love. They can look the same, especially when it comes to family. It’s hard to break free from that, and some people never do. Says the guy who tours the country with his extended family on the Ren Faire circuit for a living.

You sound like you feel trapped, and it’s totally understandable. I can also relate. Not just because this particular stop is a much smaller Faire that doesn’t provide hotel rooms. And that’s fine: we have an RV that we can camp in, and in a pinch I sleep in the back of my truck. But this part of North Carolina had an unexpected cold front, so camping wasn’t as pleasant as it usually is. It’s the last weekend here, though, before we move further south, so I’ll survive.

But for how much longer? Like you, I’ve been thinking more and more about the passage of time lately. And wondering how much longer I can live this lifestyle. I’m not twenty-one anymore, when traveling the country and sleeping in the back of a pickup was an adventure. But now that I’m thirty-one (hitting thirty wasn’t as painful as I anticipated, BTW, you’ll do just fine), I’m more likely to wake up with a backache, and insist on contracts at festivals that include hotel rooms. No more of these small-time places that want us to just work for tips. We’ve been doing this too long for that.

And then my mind circles back to How Much Longer? I know guys, performers on this circuit, who’ve been doing the same gigs for years. Decades. Is that how we’re going to end up? Are all of the guys going to want to keep this going that long? I mean, at some point, we’re going to have to make a real living, right? At least one of us is going to get married and want to stop traveling. And it’s not like we have health insurance, or any kind of retirement savings. Or a roof over our heads that doesn’t belong to family. This nomadic life can be great, but sometimes it feels like I’m speeding toward a cliff that’s just getting closer and closer. Sometimes I wish I had a safety net.

Hmm. That got kind of deep, and kind of down, which isn’t how I want to feel when I write to you. So it’s up to you, Anastasia. Cheer me up. Tell me what you’re doing on this lazy Sunday.

To: Dex MacLean

From: Stacey Lindholm

Date: November 16, 1:43 p.m.

Subject: Re: Re: PSL Final Tally!

Lazy Sundays are my favorite thing in the world, actually. Right now I’m on my laptop in my parents’ living room, about to watch a movie with my mother. She has a weakness for romantic comedies. If this is part of being in that cage, I don’t mind it so much.

Shut your mouth about PSLs. They make me happy. No support group needed, thank you very much.

Obligation, huh? You may be on to something there. You’re right, it’s tricky when it comes to family. Sometimes I wish

“Stacey?”

I jumped at the sound of Mom’s voice and closed my laptop. “Yeah, Mom.” I put my laptop on the coffee table and got off the living room couch. “You need me to get the popcorn bowl?”

“You know it. Come in here, Tall Girl.”

I had to laugh. I’d outgrown my mother by about an inch when I hit the tenth grade, but I’d stopped growing not long after that, topping out around five foot five. In no way did that make me a tall girl.

But I went into the kitchen anyway. “You could put the bowl somewhere else, you know.” I stretched on my toes to tease at the edge of it until I’d moved it far enough off the top of the fridge for it to tumble into my hands. “Somewhere you can reach.”

She shrugged and got the bag of popcorn out of the microwave. “Why do I need do that when I have you?”

“True.” I nodded slowly, trying to keep my expression neutral. There it was. She didn’t mean anything by it. She didn’t know about the email conversation I’d just been having. But just the same I felt myself nudging against the bars of that golden cage. “But you might not always.”

“What do you mean?” Mom raised her eyebrows. “You going somewhere?”

She had me there. “No . . .” I hated how heavy my heart felt in my chest when I said that. “But I might, you know.” It was a small thing: the tiniest of pushes against those golden bars. At least it was a start.

“Of course. But no rush, honey. Take your time. And until then, you can get the popcorn bowl down for me.” She patted my cheek as only a mother could as she took the bowl from my hands.

Take my time. Right. What did I expect?

Back in the living room, I moved my laptop off the coffee table while Mom picked up the remote. “Working on anything important?” She nodded toward my laptop as she pointed the remote at the television.

“That? No.” I glanced at my laptop. “Just some wedding stuff for Emily.” The lie slipped easily from my mouth, and my heart pounded. I didn’t lie to my mother. I never had. But what was I supposed to say? I’m bitching about you to a guy I used to bang but who is now a long-distance pen pal that I spill my secrets to?

If she noticed my lie, she didn’t say. “She’s so on top of everything, isn’t she?” She settled back onto the couch next to me, scrolling through the movie selections. “She runs that book club of hers with an iron fist.”

The thought of Emily distracted me from my anxiety and even made me laugh. “That’s putting it mildly. I think her lists have lists.”

I picked up the popcorn and put it between us on the couch. I could finish that email later.

Seven

Birds flew south for the winter, and apparently so did Renaissance faire performers. I’d never paid attention to the Faire circuit as an entity; it was just something I did every summer in my hometown. But since Dex and I had started—well, whatever you wanted to call what we were doing; I wasn’t sure I wanted to define it—I checked in on the Kilts’ fanpage on a regular basis, and it became clear that our Faire was just one stop among many. One small dot on a path that wound through the eastern United States, snaking through several states, sometimes ducking out toward the Midwest before coming back to the East Coast again. And as the weather grew colder and the holidays grew closer, that path moved farther and farther south, culminating in Florida just before Thanksgiving. After that they went home to Michigan through the new year, and then it was back down to Florida, where the whole thing went in reverse: Faires in the South as the path headed northward again and the weather warmed up.

Following their progress down to Florida, combined with Dex’s emails about his daily life—so different from mine—lit a fire in the back of my mind. Not a raging fire. Not even an especially bright or urgent one. More of a flickering candle flame, but it combined with that odd feeling of being left behind when Faire had ended this past summer. And together, that flickering light and that sense of yearning made me want something new. A life on the road. A life somewhere other than here.

But, as usual, I let that candle and those feelings flicker out and then I went back to work on Monday as though they’d never existed.

After Dex and the rest of the Kilts went home for the holidays, his emails came less often, which I tried not to take too personally. He was back with friends and family, after all; he probably didn’t need his online pen pal as much while he wasn’t on the road. But as Christmas slid into New Year’s Eve, the lack of emails showed me how much I’d made them part of my life. Made Dex part of my life. And I wondered if that had been a mistake. If he was just someone else who would move beyond me.

But I masked the feeling and sent him an email before I left to go out on New Year’s Eve. In the spirit of Auld Lang Syne and all that.

To: Dex MacLean

From: Stacey Lindholm

Date: December 31, 9:32 p.m.

Subject: Happy New Year

I’ve always thought that New Year’s Eve had a special sort of energy to it. Saying goodbye to the old, worn-out year, and looking forward to the promise of a bright new one. Like sliding into a bed with fresh, clean sheets on it. It’s not an energy that lasts. By February most people have forgotten the New Year’s resolutions they’ve made. I’ve stopped writing them down, myself—I hate the feeling of not living up to my own expectations.