Chapter 5 Sedona #2
By the time we step outside, the sun sits low, the October air cool enough to nip at the edges of my hoodie. I unlock the car, and we slide inside.
When the door shuts, a soft silence folds around us, and the leather smell hits me hard.
“Where to?” Clara mumbles behind a yawn she doesn’t even try to hide.
I type the address into the GPS with hands that don’t feel like they belong to me.
The familiar route appears on the screen. My breath stutters for a beat. She doesn’t notice, because she’s already sinking back in her seat.
I start the engine.
The road curves the same way it always has, quiet stretches of highway giving way to long fields that look exactly as I remember them—golden, sleepy, touched by the beginning of fall.
My pulse quickens with every mile. Nothing in me feels prepared for this. I haven’t seen this place in years, and even though I rehearsed this moment in my head, my body feels like it’s approaching a ghost.
Not the house. Me.
I left a version of myself here that I never came back for.
When we turn onto the last road, my breath catches at the back of my throat. The house comes into view slowly, almost shyly, like it’s deciding whether it recognizes me.
The porch, the chipped railing, the tall pine leaning just a little to the left. Shadows hug the edges of the place, but the sight of it hits deep enough to knock something loose inside my chest.
When I put the car in park, my fingers tremble on the keys.
Clara looks around. “This is…?”
“Home,” I whisper, though the word feels foreign and familiar at the same time.
Her eyes widen, but she doesn’t say a word. She knows me too well to ask anything right now.
As I step out, the air presses cool against my face, grounding me as the past and present collide. The house looks almost untouched, maybe a little more worn, but not abandoned.
The porch steps are still intact. The siding hasn’t peeled much. Someone must have cared, at least a little.
But the padlock on the front door is enormous. A thick, heavy metal thing that looks like it means business.
I blink, startled. I try the knob anyway, even though I know it’s pointless.
Clara comes to stand beside me. “Do you have a key?”
Her voice is gentle, and I love her for it.
“No.” My throat tightens. “Not anymore.”
She nods, not judging, just absorbing the information with that quiet solidarity she’s always had.
I scan the porch and spot a loose block of stone near the entry step—one I used to sit on when my shoes were muddy, too scared to track dirt inside. I pick it up, testing its heft, and something like determination shoots straight through the exhaustion.
“This’ll work,” I mutter.
Clara steps back as I raise it and bring it down on the lock. The crack of impact shatters the stillness. I hit it again, harder.
Memories swirl behind my ribs—every goodbye I never said, every moment I fled without looking back.
I hit it a third time, and the lock snaps open, clattering against the porch. It feels like a metaphor so on the nose I almost laugh.
I push open the door.
The house smells like dust and something faintly sweet, as if someone aired it out not too long ago. Afternoon light spills through the windows. Nothing looks destroyed or vandalized. In fact, it looks… almost tended to.
We carry our suitcases inside, our footsteps echoing softly. My pulse thuds as I take in the living room, the narrow hallway, the staircase where I used to slide down the railing and earned a bruised thigh because I misjudged the landing.
The air feels thick with memories, but I keep walking, steadying my breath.
The upstairs hall stretches out in front of me with the same creaks in the same places. When I reach my old bedroom door, my hand hesitates on the knob. My skin tingles with nerves I don’t want Clara to see.
I twist it.
The room looks frozen in time.
My posters still cling to the wall despite peeling edges. My dresser sits beneath the window, and my books are stacked exactly the way I remember—paperbacks from thrift stores, worn at the corners. Even the small ceramic bowl I used to toss my earrings into sits untouched.
Clara steps in behind me and lets out a soft laugh. “Metallica?” she says, gesturing at the giant poster above the bed. “Since when?”
Heat creeps up my neck, and I shake my head. “It was a phase.”
I walk farther inside, feeling the air shift around me. Everything feels close and far at the same time, like walking inside a dream made of old bones.
Then I look at the window.
The one Billy used to climb through.
A sharp ache bolts through my chest, so sudden I press my palm over the spot on instinct. A memory flashes—bare feet, whispered promises we had no business making, a warmth I thought would last forever.
I inhale, forcing my feet to move.
“Give me a second to get fresh sheets,” I tell Clara before my voice can betray what’s swirling inside me.
She nods and sits on the edge of the bed, her exhaustion melting across her features.
I step into the hallway closet and find a set of linens still sealed in plastic. I carry them back and start making the bed. Clara watches me, too tired to help, too tired to even pretend she’s not about to fall over.
Once the sheets are smoothed out, she pulls off her shoes, climbs onto the mattress, and sinks down with a groan of relief.
“This place…” she murmurs, eyes already dipping shut. “You had a whole different life here.”
I tuck the corner of the blanket near her shoulder. “If your family hadn’t transferred after one month, you would’ve grown up in this town with me.”
She lets out a laugh that fades into a yawn. “You have my military father to thank for that.”
“You don’t say,” I tease lightly.
She yawns again and murmurs, “Set an alarm so we don’t miss the meeting.”
“I will.”
She’s out within seconds, exhaling softly, curls falling across her cheek. I watch her for a moment, feeling something warm settle in my chest. She’s been my sole anchor through the kind of heartbreak that could’ve swallowed me whole.
When I left for New York, I ran because I didn’t know how else to survive. I ran toward something—toward becoming the person I wanted to be.
A vet with a plan. A woman who wasn’t tied down by the mistakes of her past.
But when I moved there with no plan, no direction, only this gnawing need to reinvent myself, I fell into a job at a diner. I scrubbed tables, delivered burgers, wiped down beer-sticky counters, and tried to convince myself I wasn’t lost.
Then the bartender had asked if I wanted to go dancing. Fresh from heartbreak and raw from everything I’d left behind, I said yes.
And I ran into Clara.
One look at her, one second of recognition, and something in me reopened. It had felt like fate stepping in with a firm hand, redirecting my entire life. Nothing ever happened with the bartender, but I walked out of that club with my best friend back in my life.
Since then, we’ve been inseparable. She’s the one who dragged me to the vet clinic to apply. The one who brought soup when I was sick, who made me laugh on days I didn’t think I still had that ability, who reminded me that starting over doesn’t have to mean starting alone.
I sit beside her and brush a strand of hair off her forehead, a soft fondness humming through me. She’s curled up on her side, breathing slow and deep, and even asleep, she looks like the kind of person who makes a place feel like it has a heartbeat.
The house feels different with her in it. Like it’s not closing in on me. Like it’s waiting.
I set an alarm on my phone and place it on the nightstand. The room is quiet—no, not that word. The room is still. The kind of stillness that fills the lungs instead of squeezing them.
I slide down onto the mattress beside her, exhaustion finally pulling me under. The last thing I see is the window and the space beneath it, a piece of my past that still aches, still stirs things I haven’t allowed myself to face.
But right now, Clara breathes softly next to me, and I let my eyes close.
For the first time since we boarded that plane, I let myself rest.