“Who isn’t?” I smile, stepping into the Jeep.
“Well, maybe I’ll see you around this weekend.”
“I’m sure you will. It’s a small town.”
I check my mirrors and turn on the radio—Reba McEntire’s “I’m a Survivor” blasts through the speakers. The irony of this song playing right now is not lost on me, and the magic I’ve felt all day hits me full force. Just a few hours on Georgia soil, and I can already feel myself getting realigned, centered.
I shoot Tomato Guy a megawatt smile as I pull out of the farmstand—not for the cameras, not to disarm him, not for any reason other than because I want to.
Still, I can’t help but check my rearview mirror for a reaction. I watch him lift his ball cap and run a hand through his golden curls, slightly dazed as he watches my Jeep drive away.
Another smile, this one just for me.I’ve still got it.
4
THE THING ABOUT COMINGhome is that your body always remembers before your brain does.
One whiff of pine, red clay, and lake water, and suddenly, I’m ten years old again, barefoot and sunburned, racing my brothers down the hill to the water.
I feel it as I turn off the main road, gravel crunching under my tires as I pull down the long, tree-lined driveway.
Most of the houses on this side of the lake are summer places. In recent years, many of them have been flipped into sleek vacation rentals with fresh cedar siding and modern black windowpanes, their interiors drenched in white paint.
Ours still has the sturdy feel of an old Southern farmhouse: white clapboard with blue shutters and doors. It has the kind of charm you can’t fake—or wash off with a pressure washer, no matter how hard Dad tries.
The driveway is packed with cars when I pull in. I recognize Pete’s white pickup and Linney’s minivan. I wedge Reba into thelast bit of space left, careful to avoid the flower beds that border the driveway.
I engage the emergency brake and give a gentle pat to the steering wheel. “Don’t go anywhere.” Once, during Cooper’s junior year of high school, he parked his Bronco in the same spot without putting on the brake, and it rolled down the hill before crashing into my dad’s shed. I don’t want to lose Reba the same way.
I grab my haul from the farmstand but leave the rest of my luggage in the car, then walk around the yard and enter from the lake side. The architect who built the house considered the “front” to be the facade facing the water rather than the actual main entrance that faces the road. And it’s true,thatview of our home is a showstopper.
As I round the corner, I catch sight of it all for the first time in at least two years. Everything is exactly as I remember it. Two stories of porches are stacked on top of each other, held up by thick white columns where you can sit in a rocking chair and look out over the lawn that slopes gently down to the lake. My mom’s ferns hang from planters off the porch beams, always vivid green even in the dead of summer. The eastern part of the lower porch is screened in, so you can retreat if the mosquitoes get too bad, and we have a big farm table where we like to have all our meals as long as it’s nottoohot out.
But what really sets the house apart is the gazebo my grandmother, Meema, designed—an octagonal little jewel box of white lattice and a cedar-shingled roof, perched just where the edge of the lawn meets the shade of the pines. It looks like something plucked from a storybook—though the railing is starting to rot a bit, and some of the floorboards have grown spongey. Hugging the gazebo, like a crescent of color, is my mother’s garden. Hydrangeas and hollyhocks hug close to the edge of the lattice before giving way tomounds of golden lantana, spires of purple bee balm, and small tufts of sweet alyssum.
Beyond that, there’s the lake itself. I can smell the freshwater in the air, and hear the calmingshushof its rippling surface. The floating dock my dad built out of old plastic barrels and scrap lumber creaks quietly. The old rusty pontoon boat and the secondhand ski boat that Cooper’s always been obsessed with bob side by side.
Down at the shoreline, my nephew William is wielding a water gun that’s nearly half as big as he is. I wave to my big brother Pete and his husband, Tripp, who are sitting in Adirondack chairs close enough to keep an eye on William, but far enough away to avoid the splash zone.
I walk up the wide wooden steps that lead from the lawn up to the porch. The blue double doors have been propped open to let in the breeze. I push through the screen doors and am instantly overcome by the familiarity of home.
Standing in the central hallway, I can smell freshly baked cookies—and something else too. The smell of the house itself: Mom’s favorite lemon-lavender counter spray, freshly laundered sheets, and the slight damp lake scent that clings to the window curtains. It sends a rush of nostalgia and comfort through me.
I hear sounds of life coming from the right and make my way through the arched doorway that leads to the kitchen. Dad once offered to take this wall down and make the first floor more open concept, but Mom refused, saying she wanted to keep the prep areas separate from the hosting areas of the house.I don’t want guests staring at a sink of dirty dishes!(As if she’d ever leave dirties in the sink.)
In the kitchen, I find her and my niece, Anna Carol, baking something. Mom’s standing at the island with her back to me, wearing a blue-and-white-striped shirt, crisp white cropped jeans, and anapron. Her hair—just the slightest touch of gray peeking out of the blond—is tossed up into one of her signature claw clips. My mother is truly the OG of the effortless twist. Anna Carol is sitting on the counter in front of my mom, and they’re both leaning over a bowl of what must be leftover batter. My mom immediately straightens in embarrassment, but Anna Carol, in a mermaid swimsuit, is completely untroubled to be caught with her hands in the cookie dough.
“Welcome home, Nikki-Belle,” my mom says to me, licking some batter off her own manicured finger—a sight I’ve literally never seen before.
“I’d hug you, Sweetie, but I’m amess!” she adds. “Let me clean up first!”
“Aunt Nikki,youare a mess.” Anna Carol says “mess” with a shriek of delight while waving a spoon mostly licked clean of cookie dough.
For a moment, I’d forgotten what a wreck I must look like. I fold my arms across my chest to cover the oil splatter. “Andyoulook like a beautiful mermaid,” I tell her.
“Aunt Nikki,” Anna Carol says breathlessly, letting her spoon clatter into the empty batter bowl. “Can I wear the tiara?” She looks from me to my mom.
“I told her she had to wait to ask you for permission.” My mom smiles at her affectionately, moving the bowl to the sink.
