Page 53 of The Hometown Heartbreaker

The living room was organized and deep cleaned. The hardwood floors appeared shiny and refinished. The stack of old magazines by Buddy’s chair was re-squared and anchored with a fresh empty mug. The credenza’s knobs, which had always been loose and prone to falling off when you tried to open the drawers, were now tight and perfectly lined up. The air even smelled different, not the sour old-man blend of sweat and liniment, but clean, almost floral, the faint undercurrent of lemon oil and soap.

I wandered into the kitchen, my shoes barely making a sound on the newly mopped linoleum and stopped dead. The faucet—chronically leaky and always a subject of Buddy’s bitter complaints—was silent. A new O-ring sat on the counter, a proper one, and every chrome surface shone. There were no dishes in the sink. No trash in sight. The fridge was humming at a low, healthy pitch. And there, on the counter, was a new coffee maker, toaster, and paper towel holder.

My chest hurt. There was no other word for it. The ache was raw and physical, like someone had reached in and wrung my heart out like a wet rag. I ran my fingers along the glistening clean countertops before lowering down in Buddy’s chair, staring at the tidy little kingdom that had been built up around him in my absence.

This was Dawson. It had to be. He loved Buddy, and this was how Dawson showed his love, with acts of service. He’d shown up and filled the empty spaces with his own kind of care. It was infuriating. It was unforgivable. It was all I’d wanted.

I let my head fall back against the ugly plaid cushion and thought about what it would mean to stay here. To stay, to call this place home again, to let myself fall back into the world of a man who would pour himself into acts of devotion and pretend it hadn’t cost him a thing. I could almost see it, the version of my life where I gave up the fight and let myself slip quietly back into Dawson’s dominion. But then I thought about Buddy. The look in his eyes every time he saw me. The wince of pain whenever people compared me to my mom, his Rosie, or my grandma, his Rosebud.

Coming back here would be a constant reminder of the women he’d lost. I was his constant reminder. But on the flipside, Buddy couldn’t be alone anymore, that much was true. I needed to figure out what I was going to do. If me coming home wasn’t an option, how would I care for him?

The rain picked up, drumming sharper on the roof. The windows rattled, and the lights flickered three times before settling into a dim, glow. A gust of wind knocked the screen door open causing it to bang against the frame.

It startled me, but I ignored it and walked to the desk in the corner, the one that always smelled faintly of pencil shavings and whiskey. Buddy had kept all of his important papers in the top left drawer, mixed in with grocery receipts and old birthday cards. Maybe there was something in there that would explain what was happening with the farm, why he’d let all of his employees go. I tugged open the drawer, then another. I found grocery, medicine, and feed receipts. I found birthday cards and bills. Nothing of note. Then in the bottom drawer, beneath stacks of paper, was a bundle of envelopes all addressed to “Sadie Rose Shepard,” each one in Dawson’s handwriting.

There were dozens of them, the envelopes a hodgepodge of colors and shapes, blue or black ink, all with stamps in the corner. All addressed in Dawson’s quick, forceful hand—Sadie Rose Shepard—penned across each one. I hesitated, thumbed the edge of the top one. The oldest was dated the week after I left, the next a week later, and then more and more, sometimes three in a seven day period. Some fat and crammed to bursting, others thin and light as a single page.

I sat there, the storm outside thrashing the branches against the window, and slit open the first. The words inside were exactly as I remembered Dawson’s voice: abrupt, unpracticed, but so naked that it hurt. He apologized for everything—grad night, the drinking, his own stupidity. He told me that he’d never stop loving me, and that he could never forgive himself for what had happened, what he’d done. And then he pivoted, like he always did, to talking about the animals on the ranch, about his family, about the weather and the way the bay always looked different depending on the season. Every letter was like that: a raw, bleeding wound of regret and longing, covered over with a bandage of daily life.

I read through them hungrily, one after the other, barely stopping to breathe. Each one was worse than the last, as if he’d been pouring everything out onto paper and then sealing it up before it could even begin to heal. The letters themselves were time capsules: twelve, eleven, ten, nine years ago. All the years I’d spent running from the past, and here it was, lined up in chronological order, stuffed in Buddy’s desk drawer. None of them had ever been mailed. Buddy always knew where I was. He could have easily sent them to me.

My imagination ran wild, Buddy accepting Dawson’s letters, promising he’d send them my way and then quietly pocketing them, unopened, unread. I could see him weighing them in his palm, deciding not to throw them out, but not to read them either. Maybe he was afraid I’d come back if I read them. And maybe that would have been just too painful for him. Maybe it was better with me across the country. I wasn’t a daily reminder of the two women he’d loved the most in this world that he’d lost.

The more I read, the more I felt myself coming apart at the seams. The rain was loud enough now that I could barely hear my own sniffles. My chest felt hollow and heavy at the same time, like the entire cavity had been scooped out and left to fill with dirty rainwater. I kept going, page after page, until I finally reached the last, written eight years ago. This one was short and simple, just a few succinct sentences.

I’m so sorry, Sadie. I love you. I’d do anything to have you back.

By then my hands were shaking, and I had to put the letter down. The room seemed to tilt, the furniture sliding in and out of focus. I stood up, bracing myself on the edge of the desk, and tried to breathe. The storm outside was biblical now, thunder rattling the windowpanes, lightning so close it turned the room white for a heartbeat, then plunged it back into coughing darkness. I heard the unmistakable sound of hail, stones the size of marbles pinging against the metal roof and rolling down the gutters.

The lights flickered once, then again, and then failed completely, leaving me in a darkness so total it felt like being submerged. I waited, heart thudding, for the generator to kick in, but the only sound was the relentless battering of water and hail. The silence was thick and dangerous. Even the refrigerator fell quiet, the sudden shutoff making the kitchen feel ancient, preserved in the last breath of cold air. I sat there, paralyzed, clutching the stack of letters as if they might anchor me to the floor. When I exhaled, I realized I’d been holding my breath.

Panic rose in my throat. I couldn’t stay in this house. I couldn’t stay in this moment, in this version of myself that was so raw and stripped down, so close to collapse that even a breeze could finish the job. I made it to the door on reflex, grabbing my keys and my phone, already planning to drive anywhere that wasn’t here—the gas station, Main Street Eats Diner, the edge of the world. I stepped onto the porch, and the rain battered me instantly, a cold slap that cut through my shirt and jeans in seconds. The wind swept my hair across my face, stung my cheeks, and I stumbled down the steps into the mud.

Herbie was parked under the lone maple. I yanked open the door, slid into the driver’s seat, and jammed the key into the ignition. The engine coughed, sputtered, and died. I tried again. And again. The dashboard flickered, the fuel gauge stubbornly at a quarter tank, the battery light a dull, angry red. I swore, punched the steering wheel, and closed my eyes. I didn’t have the right kind of luck for a heroic escape.

I fished my phone from my purse and saw that I had one bar, maybe half. The screen glowed blue-white against the dark storm, and my thumb hovered over the only number that made sense. The call failed before it even rang. I tried again, and this time it connected, barely, a tinny, staticky echo of Dawson’s voice on the other end.

“Hello?” His voice was tight.

“Dawson—” I almost said I need you, but the words sounded too infantile, too much a regression. “The power’s out and the truck’s dead. I⁠—”

“Where are—” The call broke, the syllables torn up and rearranged by the weather. “Sadie—storm—safe⁠—"

“I’m at the farm. I—” There was a crack of thunder so loud it swallowed my words. The screen went black. Call failed.

I tried to call back, but it didn’t go through. I tried again, same result. I attempted a half dozen more times, just in case, but to no avail. I threw the phone onto the passenger seat and sagged against the window, forehead pressed to cold glass. Outside, the wind drove debris across the yard in streaks, the maple bent almost to a right angle, and the air was thick with the smell of ozone and wet earth. For a second, I considered just sitting there, letting the storm run its course, but the growing sense of vulnerability—alone, exposed, powerless—spooked me back inside.

I sprinted through the rain, slipped once in the mud, and barely made it through the front door before the porch light snapped and fell, glass dusting the steps behind me. I slammed the door and sagged against it, breathless, soaked down to my bones. My jeans clung to my skin. My teeth chattered as I peeled off my hoodie—well Dawson’s hoodie that he’d let me borrow at the hospital but I’d kept—and shoes, leaving a trail of water across the entryway.

Not wanting to wait out the storm in soaking wet clothes, I wandered upstairs and found a box of old clothes in my childhood bedroom closet. I changed into a pair of Cupid High sweats and a t-shirt two sizes too big that were actually Dawson’s gym clothes from high school, and grabbed the pillar candles from my dresser and my matches, then shuffled back to the kitchen, phone flashlight strobing shadows across the walls. I set my pillar candles around the living room and two in the kitchen, lit them, then I looked at the letters, stacked in neat chronological misery, and felt the same ache return—the sense of a life I could have had, if only I’d been braver, or kinder, or less in love with running away.

Yes, I left because of what I saw, but maybe that was also just an excuse to get out. To leave a town that I felt I disappeared in, that I would never be able to know who I was in. If I truly had a come-to-Jesus moment with myself, I had to admit that there was a big possibility that’s what I’d done. Not because I hadn’t loved Dawson, I had, he was the one good thing in this town. The problem was, at times, he felt like the only good thing in my entire life.

I sat in Buddy’s chair, knees drawn up to my chest, and started reading again. The words blurred with each flash of lightning. My eyes watered, but I kept going, as if his confession could somehow burn away regret. I traced Dawson’s chicken scratch handwriting with my thumb, memorizing the slopes and jagged corners, the places where he pressed too hard or I could see he was concentrating on perfect penmanship, or gave up and scrawled. I was so mad. Mad at Dawson, but not for him waking up in Vicki Blair’s bed. I was mad at myself for copping out and using that as a convenient excuse, and Dawson for letting me.

All the time we’d been apart, I’d tried to convince myself that what we’d shared as teenagers wasn’t real, that it was just puppy love or infatuation. But now, being back here, reading these, spending time with him again, it was real. We really loved each other. And then one night, a series of unfortunate events and rash decisions on both our parts, seemed to negate that truth.

Time passed in fragments—the storm, the darkness, the letters, the slow feeling of my hair drying in the heatless air. Every once in a while I would think I heard footsteps on the porch, or the faint metallic click of the mailbox, but every time it was just the wind or the house settling. I alternated between reading and watching the window, the yard lit up in strobes by distant lightning. The world outside felt a million miles away.