“Always,” Dad replied, squeezing my shoulder. “That's what fathers are for—catching you when you fall and holding you until you're ready to stand again.”
And for the first time since Nate had walked away, I believed that maybe, eventually, I would be.
PART II
FULL MOON
11
THE ROAD BACK
NATE
SIX YEARS LATER
The bus wheezed to a stop like it was dying, brakes screaming against morning air that tasted of pine and regret. I pressed my forehead against the grimy window and watched mist curl over the ridges surrounding Hollow Pines, that familiar gray shroud that had haunted my dreams for six years.
Home. The word sat heavy in my chest, equal parts comfort and accusation.
Six years in Chicago, and the place looked exactly the same. Same weathered buildings huddled against the forest like they were afraid of what lived in the trees. Same crooked welcome sign that someone had been meaning to fix since I was eighteen. Same sense that time moved differently here, slower and more deliberate, like the town existed in its own pocket universe where change was something that happened to other people.
Only I'd changed. Gotten older, more cynical, beat down by a city that chewed up dreamers and spit out bitter twenty-somethings with student loan debt and a portfolio full of photographs that nobody wanted to buy.
Six months ago, I'd stood in Marcus Rothstein's gallery on North Michigan Avenue, watching him flip through my portfolio.
“Technically proficient,” he'd said, the words falling like stones into the silence between us. “But there's no heart here. No story. Just pretty pictures of urban decay that every photography student in the city has already shot.” He'd closed the portfolio with a snap that sounded like a coffin lid. “Come back when you have something to say, kid.”
I'd walked out into the October wind feeling like I'd been filleted, exposed and bloody and utterly fucking hollow. Three years of saving, scraping, building toward that one moment—gone in less than ten minutes. The worst part wasn't the rejection. It was the truth buried in his dismissal: somewhere along the way, I'd stopped feeling anything when I looked through my viewfinder. Chicago had bled me dry of wonder, leaving behind nothing but technical skill and empty ambition.
That night, I'd sat in my shoebox apartment with my phone in my hands, Evan's number pulled up but never dialed. Six years of radio silence, and what would I even say? “Hey, remember me? The guy who left you behind to chase dreams that turned out to be nightmares?” I'd stared at those ten digits until they blurred, then set the phone aside and opened another beer instead.
The memory tasted like failure and missed chances, bitter as the burnt coffee they'd been serving on Greyhound buses sincethe dawn of time. I should have called. Should have swallowed my pride months ago, years ago, the moment I realized I was drowning in a city that didn't give a damn about me.
But pride was a luxury I couldn't afford anymore.
“Hollow Pines,” the driver called out, voice rough with cigarettes and early morning shifts. “End of the line.”
End of the line. Yeah, that sounded about right.
I shouldered my camera bag and grabbed my duffel from the overhead rack, muscles protesting the familiar weight.
The bus station hadn't changed either. Same plastic chairs, same vending machines that probably still ate your dollar bills, same fluorescent lights that made everyone look half-dead. But there they were, standing by the door like they'd never left, like they'd been waiting for me to come to my senses and find my way home.
Mom and Dad. Unchanged by time in that particular way parents had of existing as constants while everything else fell apart around you.
Mom saw me first, her face lighting up. Six years of phone calls and holiday cards, of making excuses for why I couldn't come home for Christmas or Thanksgiving or the hundred other occasions when I should have been here instead of pretending I was too important, too busy, too successful to need the people who'd loved me first.
“Nate,” she breathed, and then she was hugging me with the fierce desperation of someone who'd thought she might never get the chance again. Her hair smelled like the same shampoo she'd used when I was eighteen, floral and warm and achingly familiar.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, voice rougher than I'd intended. Six years of smoking too much and drinking too much and pretending I didn't miss home had left their mark.
Dad waited his turn, patient as always, watching. When Mom finally let me go, he stepped forward and clapped a hand on my shoulder, the gesture saying everything he couldn't put into words.
“Good to have you back, son.”
The simple acceptance in his voice nearly broke me. No questions about why I'd called from the bus station instead of the airport, why I'd come home with nothing but a duffel bag and a camera instead of the success story I'd promised when I left. Just Dad being Dad, steady and reliable and exactly what I needed.
“Good to be back,” I lied, because the truth was too complicated and I wasn't ready to bleed all over them in a public place.
