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I welcomed every bit of the frustration because it gave me something immediate to focus on. As long as I was watching mirrors, switching lanes, and keeping up with traffic, I didn’t have room to think about much else.

Eventually, the congestion thinned and the skyline disappeared from my rearview mirror. Concrete gave way to stretches of pine trees, open fields, and long sections of highway where there was nothing but road ahead of me.

That was when the drive became too quiet.

With fewer cars around and more than three hours still left before I reached Hallowridge, I no longer had traffic to distract me. My mind finally had room to wander, and naturally, it went straight to the one place I had spent the last six years trying not to live in.

Home.

I hadn’t used that word to describe the town in five years.

The house I grew up in was still there, my sister was still there, but home had stopped feeling like home the very night Caspian disappeared into thin air.

The closer the GPS guided me toward the county line, the more those old memories started creeping back in. Every familiar exit, every green highway sign, and every worn-down gas station along the interstate seemed to carry some piece of the life I had once shared with Caspian.

I remembered the weekend trips we used to take with no real plan beyond getting out of town for a few days. Caspian would drive his black truck with one hand while the other rested possessively on my bare thigh, his music loud enough to rattle the doors. Every now and then, he would catch me watching him instead of the road and let out that low chuckle of his, the one that always made me smile even when I tried not to.

The memories came too easily, and I tightened my grip on the steering wheel until my knuckles ached.

Behind me, Kaidence stirred against his neck pillow, rubbing his eyes with small fists.

He had been taking cat naps the entire ride.

“Mommy, are we almost there?” he asked.

I glanced up at the large green highway sign looming over the lane ahead: Hallowridge - Next 3 Exits.

My stomach twisted into a hard, cold knot. “Almost.”

He sat upright, shaking off the sleep. “Does Granny know we’re coming today?”

“Yes.”

“Auntie too?”

“Unfortunately,” I said with dry humor.

He let out a bright little giggle, but my smile barely reached my eyes.

Kaidence knew the town through a completely different lens.

To him, Hallowridge was Granny’s sweet tea, his auntie spoiling him with candy behind my back, and Caspian’s mom showering him with toys until I had to step in and remind her I was raising a child, not royalty. He knew his father through framed photos, old cell phone videos, and stories filtered through love rather than violence. He also knew his father’s house.

That was the house he had tried to move me into and the master bedroom where I was supposed to wake up next to him for the rest of my life. Stepping foot on that property felt too much like coming face-to-face with everything I had lost without ever knowing exactly how or why.

“Mommy?” Kaidence’s voice broke through the quiet again.

I met his eyes in the rearview mirror. “What is it, Kaidence?”

He pressed his forehead against the passenger window, staring out at the trees. “Can we go by Daddy’s house?”

My foot nearly slipped off the accelerator. “What?”

“Daddy’s house,” he repeated casually.

Kaidence also knew his father’s house.

Whenever Henrietta came into town, she’d usually pick Kaidence up and keep him for the day… or days. Sometimes they went shopping or out to eat, and other times she took him with her while she checked on Caspian’s property. According to her, Kaidence loved the mansion, but I had never gone with them.