No one spoke, though Mum had the grace to look ashamed. Dad shuffled uncomfortably, too—as well he might, since Mum never did anything they hadn’t both agreed upon, and for all his quietness, Dad enjoyed and strongly endorsed his wife’s frequent bouts of bonkersness.

Focusing on her parents, she said, “If you want me to behave like an adult, you need to give me the space to do so. Instead, you treated me like a child. I got a job,” Eve went on, “for myself. A job I was committed to, and that I—that I loved—” Oh dear, her voice was wobbling. Stop thinking about Jacob. Stop it! She cleared her throat and continued. “I did exactly as you asked. But you interfered in a manner that damaged my—my chosen career.”

Dad, looking oddly pleased, interjected. “Career, is it?”

Eve desperately wanted to say yes, which gave her a flash of habitual anxiety. Sometimes (all right, fine: often) she felt as if wanting things too badly meant dooming herself to fail. But she wanted Jacob more than anything, and they couldn’t be doomed. So she refused to accept that feeling any longer. Refused to even consider it.

She’d lived in fear of failure for far too long.

“Yes,” she said after a moment. “Yes. My career.” Cooking to start people’s mornings off right, taking care of the little touches that made a house feel like a home, chatting with different guests every day and feeling as if charm could be meaningful rather than a glittering waste of time. That was her career, or it would be soon. Eve knew what she wanted, and she wasn’t afraid of it.

“I will always be grateful for the things you’ve done for me,” she told her parents quietly. “For the privileges and safety nets you’ve afforded me, for the ways you’ve supported me when I didn’t know who I was, even for pushing me to get a grip and make a change. I’m trying my best to make you proud, and I always will. But I’m never going to be like everyone else. I’m not even going to be like the rest of this family, as much as I love you all. I’m a different person and I need different things and I work in a different way, and that’s okay.”

It occurred to Eve that this would be a convenient time to mention her recent discovery vis-à-vis autism, et cetera, but she didn’t want that conversation to be a family argument in the kitchen. She wanted it to be something easy and familiar that she mentioned one day, all casually, and everyone else responded relatively casually, and everything was fine and no one looked at her for too long, and maybe Jacob was there and he held her hand.

So, not yet. Not today. Because this was her knowledge, to do with what she wanted.

Instead of blurting it out, then, she simply finished her outburst with a different truth. “I’m changing. I’m figuring myself out. You need to respect that, and let it continue, because I am an adult and I have been for quite some time. Even if I haven’t always acted like it. All right?”