Chapter 2
Savannah
The plane lands at Ashford Local Airport with a jolt that rattles my teeth and my resolve.
Ashford always does this to me. The airport welcomes you in with efficiency and motion like the land locked city it is.
The airport is all glass and forward momentum: long corridors, rolling suitcases, clipped announcements echoing overhead.
Everything here is designed to move you along, to keep you from lingering.
I pull my carry-on from the overhead bin and follow the current toward baggage claim, already bracing myself for what comes next.
Pineview doesn’t have an airport. It never needed one.
Ashford was the closest thing we had growing up and it was also the place we’d drive to on weekends when Pineview felt too small, quiet, and aware of us.
We’d pile into the designated driver’s parents’ car, windows down, music too loud on a stereo that couldn’t handle the bass and we were convinced we were escaping something even if we couldn’t name it yet.
This was my first taste of a bigger world wth brick buildings past two stories, coffee shops open past six o’clock and streets that didn’t care who my mother was or how long my family had lived anywhere.
Ashford made me hungry. New York made me reckless enough to take the bite.
I fumble for my phone and send off a quick text to Lena before I can overthink it.
Landed in Ashford. About to time-travel emotionally. Pray for me.
Proud of you. If you cry in the rental car, that still counts as personal growth.
ALSO. Please send me everything. I am living vicariously through you.
Cows standing too close to the road. Horses that look judgmental. At least one cute dog tied up outside a general store. A mayor who absolutely runs the town Facebook page.
And obviously, if there is a suspiciously handsome high school sweetheart who somehow aged into a full-grown man with emotional depth and forearms, I need documentation. I’m not saying he’s 100% packing, but I am saying small towns statistically produce that kind of man and I would like proof.
Please advise. Please comply. Thank you in advance.
I huff out a laugh and try to will the heat out of my cheeks as I approach the rental car counter. The woman hands me the keys without looking up.
Thank. God.
I’m approximately fifty shades of red.
The car smells faintly of a pine-scented air freshener that’s long past its prime, swinging lazily from the rearview mirror, with something sharper underneath it.
Disinfectant, maybe, or the lingering residue of other people’s lives passing briefly through.
I load my suitcase into the trunk and slide into the driver’s seat, sitting there longer than necessary with my palms pressed flat against the steering wheel, grounding myself like this is part of the rental agreement.
Aunt Carol offered to pick me up, like she always does, but she knows better than to push. She understands the space I need, the time it takes me to shift gears. To acclimate. Or distract myself. Or, if we’re being honest, dissociate just a little before reentering my own life.
Probably all three.
I could turn around right now. I could hop back on a plane and slip right back into clean sheets, into familiar-enough arms and a life that doesn’t ask absolutely nothing of me beyond remembering where I put my keys before I leave my apartment.
I don’t. I stay.
The highway out of the city is loud and impatient, traffic surging forward like it has somewhere important to be.
Gradually, the buildings thin. The exits stretch farther apart.
Cell service flickers, then steadies again, weaker now.
By the time I turn onto the two-lane road that leads toward Pineview, the world has gone quiet in a way that feels intentional.
The drive into town is a study in recognition.
The same hardware store with the crooked sign leaning left no matter how many times it’s fixed.
The diner with the green awning that’s never quite the same shade twice.
The long stretch of road where I learned how to drive, crying so hard in frustration that I had to pull over while my mother rubbed slow circles into my back and promised me it would pass.
Everything passes, she’d say.
She didn’t say everything leaves.
Everything looks smaller, or maybe I’ve just grown around it.
Christmas lights outline storefronts like they’ve been traced by memory itself. A banner stretches across Main Street — WELCOME HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS — the letters cheerful and unapologetic.
I should really take a picture of this for Lena later. It’s small town content gold. That thought offers me reprieve from the weight of it all until I turn onto my mother’s street and see it immediately.
The sign.
SOLD.
White post. Red lettering. Crooked from the wind.
My chest tightens so fast it almost feels physical, like something has wrapped around my heart and pulled.
This house, the place where scraped knees were kissed better, where birthdays were measured on doorframes, where Christmas mornings were loud and chaotic and alive, already belongs to someone else.
I park anyway.
I sit there for more than a few breaths, listening to the engine ticking softly as it cools. The porch light glows warm against the early dusk, illuminating the familiar steps, the railing she always meant to repaint, the loose board that used to squeak no matter how careful you were.
For one terrible second, I expect the door to open.
It doesn’t. Not anymore.
Inside, the house smells the same with hints of lemon polish and cedar, with my mother’s floral perfume clinging stubbornly to the walls.
But it looks different.
Boxes are stacked neatly along the walls, labeled in Aunt Carol’s careful handwriting. Kitchen. Linens. Donate. Storage. Furniture has been shifted, rugs rolled, shelves half-empty like teeth missing from a smile. The house feels paused mid-sentence.
My coat stays on. My suitcase stays in the car. I’m not staying here while I’m back. I’m just tying loose and painful ends.
The living room couch is wrapped in plastic now, the indentation where my mother always sat still faintly visible beneath it.
The lamp still leans slightly left, but there’s tape securing the cord.
The dent in the wall from the night I slammed a door too hard at sixteen is still there, but now there’s a sticky note beside it, a reminder for the new owners to patch it up and make it theirs. Only theirs.
The hallway creaks under my feet, each step announcing me like the house is reminding me I belong here whether I want to or not.
My childhood bedroom door is closed, and I leave it that way. I don’t open it. The thought alone is more than I can carry right now.
In the dining room, a smaller pile of boxes sits off to the side. They aren’t labeled or sealed, just set apart and waiting, unmistakably meant for me. Photo albums. A stack of notebooks. A shoebox with its lid half off.
These are the things Aunt Carol didn’t touch because she knew better. The things she left deliberately, like a question only I’m allowed to answer, like memories I’m not yet ready to face but know I will have to, eventually.
The kitchen is where I finally stop. The heart of the home and especially this one.
The table still bears the faint scratch from where I tried to carve a heart into it with a butter knife, much to my parents’ dismay.
The fridge hums softly, nearly empty, save for a single magnet she never took down — Believe — chipped at the corners and stubborn as ever.
Tenacious, like her.
Her favorite mug sits by the sink, turned slightly toward the window, the faint chip on the rim she always meant to fix.
I bought it for her one Christmas. It was part of a collection from a coffee shop we used to frequent together.
I would have travelled the world to get her every single one if I could have. If I had just had more time.
It hasn’t been packed, like it was waiting for me.
I press my fingers into the counter, grounding myself, breathing until the ache dulls enough to let me stand upright again.
“I am here for paperwork.” I repeat it like an affirmation.
A shield. A lie I almost believe.
Sign the papers.
Close the door.
Let the boxes go.
I stare at the unlabeled pile across the room, the things waiting for me, and then at the SOLD sign through the living room window, swaying slightly in the breeze like it’s already loosening its claim.
Can I do this?
The thought comes sharp and panicked.
I don’t know if I can do this.
The house doesn’t argue. It just holds everything that’s already been sorted, everything that’s already been boxed up and leaves the hardest parts for me.
I’m back in my car, driving toward the town square, a much smaller one mind you, because staying in the house any longer than I need to feels like drowning in familiar air.
I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours hiding, which is usually how I get through my time in Pineview.
First it was the motel off Route 9, the one with the flickering vacancy sign and a carpet that smelled like industrial cleaner and I don’t even want to guess what else.
That lasted all of twenty minutes, until my Aunt Carol found out and decided it was absolutely not happening.
Since then, I’ve been shacked up in the one decent rental Pineview has to offer. Exposed brick. Soft lighting. A chalkboard sign by the door that reads Welcome Home, like it’s in on some kind of joke.
Spoiler alert: it’s not.
I avoid the town square most times I’ve been back since everything happened.
I always do, because the square is where people run into each other. Where there’s nowhere to disappear to. Where faces come with history attached and names carry weight. It’s where people look at you a second too long, trying to place you not as you are, but as you were before.