When the familiar sight of Everdale Falls's main street came into view, it felt like traveling backward through time to aversion of myself I'd outgrown but might need to temporarily inhabit while I figured out how to move forward. I saw the same coffee shop where I'd worked during high school summers, the same bookstore where I'd spent countless hours hiding from my problems in other people's stories, the same pharmacy where Mr. Henderson had worked since before I was born and probably would continue working until the heat death of the universe.
Even the Christmas decorations looked unchanged—oversized wreaths on every lamppost and enough twinkle lights to be seen from space, the kind of small-town holiday enthusiasm that had felt suffocating when I was seventeen and desperate to escape but now seemed charming in its reliability and commitment to seasonal cheer.
I turned onto Maple Street and felt my chest tighten as my childhood home came into view. White colonial, green shutters, the wraparound porch where I'd spent countless summer evenings reading books and planning my escape to bigger and more exciting places. It looked exactly the same, which was both comforting and terrifying. At least something in my life was stable, even if that stability came with the emotional complexity of returning to the place, I'd been so eager to leave.
Mom and Dad were waiting on the front steps before I'd even parked, which meant they'd been watching for my headlights with the kind of parental dedication that was both touching and slightly embarrassing. Dad jogged over before I'd fully turned off the engine, his face lighting up like I was returning from war instead of returning from spectacular professional failure and strategic life reorganization.
"There's our girl," he said, pulling me into a bear hug that smelled like his aftershave and home and everything I'd been too proud to admit I missed during my years of determined independence.
"Hi, Daddy." The childhood nickname slipped out automatically, and I didn't even care that I was twenty-eight years old and calling my father Daddy in public where neighbors could witness my temporary regression to daughter status.
Mom was next, wrapping me in the kind of hug that could solve most problems and at least temporarily heal the rest. She was wearing her favorite Christmas sweater, the one with the sequined Christmas tree that she'd owned since I was in elementary school, and she smelled like vanilla perfume and the pot roast they’d already eaten, waiting for me to roll up like an exhausted pigeon, a bit stinky and over-caffeinated.
"Welcome home, sweetheart," she said, holding me tight enough to communicate that this homecoming was wanted rather than just tolerated. "Everything's going to be fine."
Standing there in my parents' driveway, I almost believed her.
Some homecomings were definitely more complicated than others, but maybe complicated wasn't the same thing as bad. Maybe sometimes you had to travel backward in order to figure out how to move forward in a direction that actually made sense.
Maybe being Holly Winters, temporarily unemployed and living with her parents in Everdale Falls, Vermont, wasn't the worst thing that could happen to someone who'd spent the last few years being Holly Winters, successful professional woman of Chicago who'd forgotten what home felt like.
Time would tell, but at least I'd be well-fed while I figured it out.
Three
DECLAN
Return of the Prodigal Son
The rental car’sGPS announced I’d reached my destination in the same cheerful tone it had used to navigate me through six hours of traffic and existential dread. I sat in the driveway of 47 Maple Street, staring at the house I’d grown up in and wondering what the hell I was doing here.
The white colonial looked smaller than I remembered, but that might have been a side effect of spending the last eight years in Manhattan, where anything with a yard was considered a mansion. Mom’s flower boxes were empty for winter, but she’d already hung wreaths on every window. Because of course she had. Martha Hayes didn’t do anything halfway, especially at Christmas.
I turned off the engine and sat in the sudden quiet, my hands still gripping the steering wheel. Three weeks ago, I’d been a rising star at Morrison, Kline & Associates, billing eighty hours a week and pretending I thrived on the pressure. Two weeks ago, I’d had a panic attack in the middle of a deposition and spenttwenty minutes hyperventilating in a courthouse bathroom stall while opposing counsel waited for me to return from having “the shits”. Yeah. That was way less embarrassing.
One week ago, I’d walked into my senior partner’s office and asked for an indefinite sabbatical.
“Burnout’s a real thing, Hayes,” Richard Morrison had said, barely looking up from his computer screen where he was probably billing someone three hundred dollars an hour for answering emails. “Take the time. Figure out what you want. Partnership track will still be here when you get back.”
The unspoken‘ifyou get back’ had hung in the air like a noxious fart of unfulfilled expectations.
So here I was, thirty-one years old with a law degree from Columbia, a corner office overlooking Central Park, and a bank account that could buy this entire street, house-sitting my parents’ place while they lived their best retired life in Sarasota. Because apparently, when your perfectly successful life imploded from the inside out, you went back to where it all started and hoped something would make sense again.
I grabbed my bags from the trunk and walked up the front path, noting how Mrs. Patterson across the street was definitely curtain-twitching from behind her Christmas-themed drapes. Small towns never changed. By tomorrow morning, everyone would know exactly when I’d arrived, what I was driving, what I was wearing, how long I’d stayed in the driveway before going inside, and probably what I’d had for breakfast. The Everdale Falls gossip network had always been more efficient than any social media platform.
The key was under the ceramic frog, exactly where it had been since I was twelve years old and was deemed old enough to be home alone after school, but not responsible enough to carry a key around with me. Fair decision. Some things never changed in Everdale Falls, which was either deeply comfortingor mildly depressing, depending on your current relationship with progress and personal growth.
Inside, the house smelled like cinnamon potpourri and whatever furniture polish Mom had been using since the Carter administration. Everything was exactly as I remembered—same floral couch that had witnessed countless homework sessions and PlayStation tournaments, same family photos marching up the staircase in chronological order, same wooden bowl on the kitchen counter that had held car keys and loose change for decades.
I dropped my bags and walked through the rooms, reacquainting myself with the geography of my childhood. The living room where Matt and I had built elaborate LEGO cities. The kitchen where Mom had attempted to teach me to cook with varying degrees of success and kitchen fire incidents. The back porch where Dad and I had spent summer evenings talking about everything and nothing while watching the sun set behind the mountains.
My old bedroom had been converted into Mom’s craft room, complete with a quilting station that looked like mission control and enough yarn to stock a small textile factory. Dad’s study was now a reading nook with a recliner that appeared capable of swallowing a person whole and never releasing them back to productive society.
The guest room would have to do, which was fine. I wasn’t planning to stay long anyway. Just long enough to figure out whether I wanted to go back to New York and resume my perfectly successful, soul-crushing career, or find some alternative that didn’t involve panic attacks disguised as diarrhea in courthouse bathrooms.
I was unpacking my suitcase—noting how my expensive suits looked ridiculous hanging in a closet decorated with baseball-themed wallpaper from 1987—when I heard a car door slam nextdoor. The sound was followed by voices, muffled but animated, which piqued my curiosity enough to glance out the window.
And then I froze completely.
