Mom’s eyes are the dangerous slits I remember from childhood, the look she used on the neighborhood kids who left me out of games, the look that always came right before righteous maternal fury. Her grip tightens on the cart handle. “What do you say we ram this cart straight into his kneecaps?”
“Mom!” I hiss, simultaneously horrified and touched by her protective instinct.
“Fine,” she concedes, though her tone suggests Jake’s kneecaps have merely received a temporary reprieve. The fierce loyalty warming her expression reminds me why I’ve missed her so much. More than anyone, she witnessed the aftermath of my heartbreak—the late-night sobbing calls from New York, the holidays when I couldn’t face coming home because every street corner in Maplewood Springs held a memory of him.
We steer our carts toward checkout, selecting a lane at the farthest end of the store. I keep my head down, focusing on unloading our healthy bounty onto the conveyor belt. A cluster of footsteps sounds behind us, and I glance over my shoulder.
There he stands, two people behind us in line, attention locked on his phone. His jaw is sharper than I remember, working faintly as he reads, that same unconscious habit he had during exams in high school, like he’s chewing through problems he refuses to lose to.
Mom notices, too, and shifts her weight like she’s quietly recalculating the distance to his kneecaps. I catch her arm with a restraining hand, the gesture half grip, half prayer. The last thing I need is a scene at Piggly Wiggly becoming juicy gossip before I’ve even reestablished residence.
She subsides with a mutinous pout, but her glare stays trained on Jake’s oblivious face.
I hide my face behind the curtain of my hair as we grab our bags in record time and bolt for the exit.
I risk another glance at Jake, whose eyes remain glued to his phone, blissfully unaware of the emotional hurricane raging inside of me.
Chapter 2
Mom turns up the gravel driveway, loose stones crunching beneath the tires like hard candy.
Two hundred acres sprawl before me, a sweep of rolling hills and green trees, sunlight caught in the leaves, space upon space upon space. The knot of anxiety in my chest finally loosens as if this land is reaching in and untying it for me after what happened at Piggly Wiggly.
“Home sweet home,” Mom says as she slows down.
I lean forward, greedy for the sight, as if I can pull it into my lungs along with the clean air. My great-great-grandfather bought this land when it was nothing but wild terrain, untamed and relentless, and he kept it, fought for it, passed it down until it reached my father’s capable hands. This place has been the one constant in our family, rooted and unchanging, an anchor in the middle of a world that never stops spinning.
There he is. Dad. Rocking steadily in his favorite white wicker chair on the porch, one hand lifting in greeting as we roll toa stop. Behind him, our three-story ranch house stands proud, cheerful white shutters framing the windows and that bright blue front door glowing like a beacon, exactly as I remember. The garden still hugs the eastern side, tucked behind the same white picket fence I helped paint the summer after eighth grade, when my world was small enough to fit inside these boundaries.
Mom hasn’t even cut the engine before I’m flinging open my door and scrambling out to meet my father.
“Dad!” The word bursts from me, raw and eager.
He stands with that same unhurried grace and holds his arms open. I crash into him. Suddenly I’m eight again, seeking refuge from scraped knees and pouncing red foxes. I’d forgotten how safe I feel in my dad’s arms, like nothing can touch me when he’s holding me.
“Look who finally decided to grace us with her presence,” he says with a chuckle, the sound deep and familiar against my ear.
The scent of motor oil clings to his faded T-shirt, unmistakable proof of another day spent tinkering with that ancient Buick of his. I used to wrinkle my nose and nag him—daily—to trade the rust bucket in for something built in this millennium. Now I inhale deeply, because I didn’t realize a smell could be a kind of homecoming. Motor oil and cinnamon and freshly cut grass, all braided together into the scent of him that I love so much.
“I’ve missed you so much, Dad.” The tears come without warning, hot trails mapping my cheeks as four years of distance collapse into this single moment.
“I’ve missed you too, angel.” His large hand pats my back, steady and gentle.
I wipe at my tears, trying to piece my composure back together. Dad breaks our embrace to haul my suitcase from the trunk, hefting it with a surprising ease for a man whose hair has thinned and whose middle has softened with the years. He mightnot look like it anymore, but he’s always had the strength of a black bear.
We climb the stairs together, passing the gallery of Lake family history lined along the wall. There’s tiny Sarah in a bumblebee costume, gap-toothed Sarah grinning through the absence of her two front teeth, teenage Sarah at graduation wearing that truly tragic brown lipstick, a full chronicle of awkward phases preserved for eternity. The house creaks beneath our weight, as if it’s voicing its pleasure at having me home.
Dad opens my bedroom door, and the scent of vanilla washes over me so suddenly it steals the breath from my lungs. “That fancy candle of yours never quite burned out,” he says, as if it’s an ordinary fact and not a small miracle. He sets my suitcase down with a soft thud, then pauses, and says, “I’ll leave you to it. When you’re settled, come down for dinner.” Then he looks at me, steady and gentle. “I’m glad you’re back home.”
“Thanks, Dad. Me too.” The exchange is ordinary, but the feeling inside me isn’t. Relief floods in. Nostalgia follows. And then that strange sense of déjà vu settles over me, like the last four years were just an extended vacation from my real life, that I’m only now returning to what I was always meant to come back to.
After he leaves, I stand there and let my eyes sweep the room. My closet is unchanged, frozen in time: high school T-shirts folded neatly on the top shelf, homecoming bracelets arranged by size, yearbooks lined up in perfect chronological order. There is evidence of the girl I used to be, the one who believed that if she kept everything in its place, nothing would change.
I lower myself to the floor, crossing my legs, and stare at the evidence of who I am now. Clothes thrown without thought. A half-empty suitcase gaping open. Shipping boxes I mailed ahead spilling their guts across the carpet like they couldn’t hold it in either. Past-Sarah’s orderliness feels like a myth, a girl whobelieved she could control the world by sorting it. Present-Sarah knows better. Present-Sarah is chaos, and the realization lands heavily in my chest.
Grabbing a box cutter, I slice through packing tape and pull back cardboard flaps on an overstuffed box. I lean against the bed frame, swiping sweat from my brow with the back of my hand, suddenly overwhelmed by the magnitude of unpacking—both literal and emotional.
Unlike the rest of the house, which cradles only warm memories, this room is full of echoes that ache. Whispered promises. Late-night phone calls pressed to my ear in the dark. Plans made in breathless certainty with Jake…my ex-boyfriend. My ex-everything.
