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“I don’t know what I would do, but I know what I wouldn’t.”

“What wouldn’t you do?”

“I’d never sit at a desk and then come home to a thousand errands with no energy.”

He nods. Waits.

“I’d never spend nine hours working somewhere all day with a to-do list a mile long and then come home to a house to clean and a dinner to make and a shopping list to prep and a car to wash and yet a totally different to-do list a mile long. I’d keep life simple. Sometimes I just wish . . . I could keep life simple. Get married. Make a nice home. Raise a few kids. Deep down, if I were really honest with myself, to me? That never sounded like a terrible idea. To me? That sounds . . . peaceful.”

I don’t think I’ve ever said that out loud.

Huh.

James, for his part, looks completely unsurprised. “So you want to be a homemaker.”

I wrinkle my nose at the term. That’s like announcing I’m a professional shoplifter. Not to mention, embarrassing.

Somehow it makes me sound lazy and also desperate for marriage.

“I mean . . . technically . . . yes.”

The truth is, as I stand in this sterile kitchen surrounded by bustling people under Čedomir and the clattering of pots and pans and James asking if I want this life, the answer is yes, to some degree. A little bit. A job here in the kitchen would far outweigh my life sitting in a cubicle entering data into fields on a computer screen.

But far better still isn’t the same as dream job, and when I get asked what I really want to do, it’s this: I want to live in a world without alarm clocks.

I want to have time to cook in the evenings. Really cook. Leisurely cook.

I want to go on hikes again, regularly, and not just watch the mountains as I drive to and from work.

I want to host parties.

I want to feel I have time again to sit down with my parents and grandparents and really talk.

And while there may be millions of women on this planet who can juggle both their jobs and these other things seamlessly, I can’t.

And yes, I think it’s pretty obvious I want to get married. I want a good man to share life with.

I’m twenty-five. I’ve worked myself to the bone the past seven years. And I don’t want to spend the next four stacking up debt for some degree I’m half-hearted about. I don’t want to go out and hunt for something else to sit at all day.

Let the world do its rushing. Let women everywhere reach all their incredible dreams and save lives in operating rooms and lead meetings on top of skyscrapers; the world needs them. I wish them all the deep satisfaction in the world. But for me? Chloe Hollis? Secretly?

I just want a peaceful life.

Oh, it kills me to think that. It’s humiliating even to admit that to myself.

I’ve spent the past twenty years since kindergarten being asked what I want to be when I grow up, and I can’t recall a single time anyone said I just want to keep a home, thank you very much as a viable statement.

Who knows? Maybe I’m bringing down the progression of women everywhere by admitting my dreams in the back kitchen of the backwoods of West Virginia. Maybe intelligent, successfully employed women everywhere are hearing me now and wringing their hands that I’m setting them back a hundred years.

I’m not trying to. Really. I’m not.

And I’m fairly certain I’m not even allowed to mention such a secret desire before I’m married either. At best I’m supposed to tuck it away until the wedding bells have stopped ringing and I’ve popped out a baby or two and then maybe, maybe slip into that kind of life by accident. Certainly not on purpose or premeditated.

“That makes sense. I could see that.” James is looking from his recipe to the pot and the chicken stock before me. He says this as though my admission is quite unrevolutionary and, more than that, unsurprising. And frankly, I find it irritating.

“What do you mean that it makes sense?” I say, frowning.

He shrugs. “You said your mom’s a homemaker. You probably have grandparents who are homemakers. You’ve probably seen something there that you liked. You like cooking but want to be the master chef, not somebody in a line being told what to do. You have an independent spirit. You hated your last job and don’t want to find something else like it. The job opportunities here are somewhat limited. You’d likely have to find something remote, and as you’ve said, you didn’t enjoy desk work. It just makes sense. If being a homemaker is what you want, nothing is stopping you from getting to that point eventually.”