I stand there, hand braced against a concrete pillar, waiting for my heartbeat to slow.
Home.
I test the word as I load my duffel into the trunk.
It doesn't fit.
Feels like wearing someone else's skin.
I haven't called Ashford Falls home in eight years.
Haven't called anywhere home. Home requires staying in one place long enough to learn the way light falls through the windows.
To hang pictures. To let yourself believe you'll wake up in the same bed tomorrow.
I learned to sleep with one eye open instead.
The drive takes two hours.
I take 64 West toward Charlottesville, then cut south into the valley.
The mountains rise soft and green on either side, ancient and patient, nothing like the jagged peaks of the Hindu Kush.
No snipers in these ridgelines. No IEDs buried in the road.
My fingers stay tight on the wheel anyway.
The radio plays classic rock. Dad's station.
The one he kept on in the garage when I was a kid, when he could still spend eight hours bent over an engine block, when his back was strong and his hands were steady and the world hadn't broken him yet.
My throat tightens.
I turn the music up loud enough to fill my head. Not so loud I can't hear the engine.
Trust, but verify. Even here. Even now.
I pass the sign for Ashford Falls around four in the afternoon.
Population 4,012. Est. 1789. A Great Place to Call Home.
Fresh paint. Crisp lettering. Someone poured money into making this town look welcoming.
My fingers go white on the steering wheel.
Don't think about him.
Main Street unspools like a memory I can't shake. The diner where I worked summers, flirting for tips I saved in a jar under my bed.
The hardware store where Mr. Smith let me loiter in the air conditioning when home got too heavy. The church steeple stretching toward the sky like even it wanted to escape.
But there are changes, too.
The library has a new wing. The fire station has a new truck. The gazebo in the town square has been rebuilt, twice as big as the one where Gracie and I used to sit and pretend we'd grow up to live lives nothing like our mothers'.
Someone's been very busy.
Don't.
