But there's a new grocery store where the old hardware shop used to be.
A coffee place that looks like it wandered in from Austin and got lost.
The diner across from Grace's vet clinic has a new sign but the same windows, and through them I can see the same red vinyl booths where I used to eat pancakes after my bar shifts, back when pancakes at midnight felt like the height of luxury.
I drive slowly. Not because I want to, because my body won't let me go faster.
Every block is a landmine.
There's the church—Jolene's church.
Front pew, every Sunday.
I used to walk past it on my way to work and wonder what it felt like to be that certain about anything—about God, about your place in the world, about the man sitting next to you and whether he'd still be there when you opened your eyes.
There's the school. Sharp Elementary.
Small, brick, a mural on the side that's been repainted at least twice since I was a kid.
I went there. My mother went there.
Everyone in this town went there, and everyone in this town remembers who went there with them, which means everyone in this town remembers Marlena Philips.
The girl from the bad house on the east side.
The girl whose father left and whose mother worked doubles and who got a job at a biker bar at eighteen because nobody was watching closely enough to stop her.
The girl who caught the MC president's eye and then disappeared.
They'll remember. Small towns don't forget.
They just file things away and wait for the right moment to bring them back out, and my return to Sharp is going to be that moment for a lot of people.
I park on Main Street in front of an empty storefront between the coffee shop and a place that sells Western wear. T
he storefront has a FOR LEASE sign in the window and dust on the sill and the bones of something that used to be a boutique.
I can see the display shelves through the glass, the track lighting on the ceiling, the back room that could be a wash station.
I cup my hands against the glass and look in.
It's not perfect. It's small—two, maybe three chairs max.
The plumbing would need updating.
The floors are scarred and the paint is peeling and the whole place has the abandoned smell of a space that's been empty too long.
But it's on Main Street. It has foot traffic.
It has natural light from the front windows. And most importantly, it has nothing to do with Sharp Shooter Ranch or the Shotgun Saints MC or Harlan.
I take a photo of the FOR LEASE sign and save the number.
The rest of the morning passes in the strange, suspended way that mornings pass when your entire life has been upended and you're pretending it hasn't.
I buy coffee.
I drive the streets I used to know and catalog what's different.
