“Just kidding, Baby,” he murmurs near my ear. “It’s all good. You get your seatbelt on.”
I do what he says because what else can I do?
This man—this impossibly steady, grounded force of a man—is doing everything in his power to make this easier for me.
Seven hours later, we land at a small regional airport about forty minutes from my childhood home.
It’s surreal.
Snow here is gone. All of it has long since melted away.
But it’s rainy, and the roads are wet.
The sky is an ugly gray, and leafless trees paint a grim sort of picture, but it’s familiar.
Painfully so.
I’ve already texted my mother.
Told her we’d be arriving past dinnertime.
She responded with a single thumbs up.
I didn’t read into it. I didn’t want to.
Now I wish I had.
Because when Thatcher pulls into the gravel drive, everything in my gut goes tight.
I step out, slowly.
My new boots crunch over the old stones, and something inside me clenches.
The house looks the same.
Faded blue siding.
A porch that needs repainting.
The creak of the screen door as Thatcher holds it open for me makes a chill run up my spine.
Then I walk in.
And the world tilts.
Not in a good way.
She’s there.
My mother.
Calm. Composed.
Sipping tea at the kitchen table like this is just another quiet afternoon.
Like she isn’t the woman who spent years carving pieces off me with her words and calling it concern.
Like she never told me—over and over—that men didn’t want girls built like me.
