Hardly a welcome home, but still warmer than the greetings I’m expecting.
I meant to call my mom or text one of my brothers. Every time I passed a rest stop, I meant to pull over, get gas, and let them know I’d be coming home. Before I knew it, I was at myexit, and I hadn’t found the stones to even pull their contact info up.
“You really think they wouldn’t make room on the seating chart for me?” I ask, and her eyes dip down as she bites her lip.
Jeez, I didn’t think that’d actually be on the table.
I turn in the booth, propping a foot up on the seat beside me. “So. What’s she like?”
Laura shrugs simply. “Never met her.”
My gaze narrows on her. Laura knows everyone and everything. She convinces you to let her practice her beauty-school-dropout hair cutting skills on you and ends up wheedling out everything you didn’t want anyone to know while she makes you regret your decision.
I prop my head up in my hand, watching her carefully as she examines her nails.
“Hashemet her?”
A smirk crosses her face, and I can tell by the way she rolls her eyes as she turns to me, revealing her teeth as her smile widens, that I’ve stumbled on her most recent favorite topic.
“You mean did the family pick someone out for him?” she asks, voice actually hushed, so that the others in the diner can’t hear us. “Someone...appropriate?”
“Did they?”
She rolls her eyes and looks out the window. “I mean, I don’t doubt it. You’ve been gone. Some of the cousins have moved away. Family’s getting small.”
“It happens. People move away when they grow up. It’s expected.”
“Other people do.”
She pauses, and the bell by the door chimes as someone else comes into the diner, flannel shirts dusted with the beginnings of rain.
Laura sighs and scoots out of the booth, stretching and pulling her notepad out of her apron pocket. She waves the customers to sit wherever they want but stops to lean over my shoulder with some final words.
“And there’s been rumors around town about some animal attacks. Wolf sightings.”
My heart catches in my throat at that, a stab of panic in my chest.
Laura shrugs like she said nothing important at all, like she didn’t make me start to sweat. Twirling one of her wild curls around her finger she adds, “I wouldn’t be surprised if the family started getting superstitious.”
For the first time, I feel truly guilty about not being home. Maybe I should have been there this whole time. Maybe I was wrong to leave.
She walks off to bring a pot of coffee and some thick ceramic mugs over to the other table, and I get up. Forget breakfast, I need to get home.
I cut through some service roads that weave through the woods to get there, the rain never letting up. The urgency in my chest doesn’t ease up until I’m passing the wide stretches ofmy old neighbors’ farm acreage, and I’m at the start of the long driveway up to the house.
Home, when it hasn’t been home in so, so long.
The house looks the same as it ever did, maybe the porch finally looks fixed. I don’t recognize all the cars out front, there’s some new flowers planted in the garden beds.
My youngest brother is in the driveway, taking out the trash when I start to crest the hill. It takes a moment to recognize him, the way he’s filled out his scrawny bones, the fact that he’s cut his hair short. He still dresses like a kid though, with his superhero T-shirts and fuzzy pajama pants in the middle of the day.
A smile breaks out across his face when he sees me, and that eases my hackles a little.
“DUDE,” Aiden booms, jogging across the gravel drive to meet me.
I’m barely out of the car when he leaps into my arms like he half-meant to tackle me, and I drop my bag to the ground with him. It’s messy and a little awkward, but the heart is there. At least someone is happy I’m here.
“How is everyone?” I ask, clapping a hand against his shoulder.
