4
Shawn
It’s nearly eleven a.m. when I finally get back on the road. I’ve been dragging my feet, taking the long way back home, kind of hoping I’ll get lost.
I brush off most of the leaves before I get in the car. It’s a rental because I’ve simply forgone the headache of trying to find parking consistently in Boston. In the last decade, I haven’t needed one to make the drive to Mystic Falls in the far corner of western Massachusetts, because I’ve also forgone going home until now.
I could have stopped at a motel for the night instead of sleeping on the ground, but it’s better that I didn’t. There’re less damages to pay after scratching the hell out of some trees instead of walls.
And because I’m procrastinating the last couple miles to my childhood home, I take the route through the middle of historic Mystic Falls. I could kill a couple hours at the local diner. The last few times I’ve made a rest stop, there were the Aconite Ales bottles starting to creep up in the refrigerator cases behind gas station counters, along with all the other small-batch labels. There were a lot of other little breweries or distilleries dotted along the mountain. Mystic Falls doesn’t see a ton of tourism, but Aconite’s label has started to spread.
The bell clings as soon as I open the door, and there’s only a few seconds before I feel too many eyes on me. Eight years and still all the same regulars at the Circle E, and none of them have learned to mind their own business since then either.
Sliding into the diner seat, the leathery plastic squeaks beneath me. I’ve got that wild mushroom omelet they used to make on my mind when I feel someone hovering at the table’s edge.
I look up and it’s Laura with the little waitress apron slung around her waist, and in the next moment she’s plopping down in the booth opposite me. Her hair is twice as big as I remember it, but she’s still wearing just as much makeup as she did in high school.
“Oh my god, I didn’t think you were gonna show up,” she says, eyes wide, post abandoned for the foreseeable future. I glance over the back of the seat, and it looks like she was the only one taking orders.
“Hello to you too,” I return, sighing. It’s hard not to smile when I see her though. Guess I can forget about breakfast. But I’m glad to run into her. A temperature check with my cousin was probably a good idea. Laura was always good for saying the quiet part out loud.
“Shawn,” she says, with more urgency in her voice than a greeting really calls for. She ducks her head, but barely lowers her voice. “Were you even invited?”
Hardly a welcome home, but still warmer than the greetings I’m expecting.
I meant to call my mom or text one of my brothers. Every time I passed a rest stop, I meant to pull over, get gas, and let them know I’d be coming home. Before I knew it, I was at my exit, and I hadn’t found the stones to even pull their contact info up.
“You really think they wouldn’t make room on the seating chart for me?” I ask, and her eyes dip down as she bites her lip.
Jeez, I didn’t think that’d actually be on the table.
I turn in the booth, propping a foot up on the seat beside me. “So. What’s she like?”
Laura shrugs simply. “Never met her.”
My gaze narrows on her. Laura knows everyone and everything. She convinces you to let her practice her beauty-school-dropout hair cutting skills on you and ends up wheedling out everything you didn’t want anyone to know while she makes you regret your decision.
I prop my head up in my hand, watching her carefully as she examines her nails.
“Has he met her?”
A smirk crosses her face, and I can tell by the way she rolls her eyes as she turns to me, revealing her teeth as her smile widens, that I’ve stumbled on her most recent favorite topic.
“You mean did the family pick someone out for him?” she asks, voice actually hushed, so that the others in the diner can’t hear us. “Someone . . . appropriate?”
“Did they?”
She rolls her eyes and looks out the window. “I mean, I don’t doubt it. You’ve been gone. Some of the cousins have moved away. Family’s getting small.”
“It happens. People move away when they grow up. It’s expected.”
“Other people do.”
She pauses, and the bell by the door chimes as someone else comes into the diner, flannel shirts dusted with the beginnings of rain.
Laura sighs and scoots out of the booth, stretching and pulling her notepad out of her apron pocket. She waves the customers to sit wherever they want but stops to lean over my shoulder with some final words.
“And there’s been rumors around town about some animal attacks. Wolf sightings.”
My heart catches in my throat at that, a stab of panic in my chest.
Laura shrugs like she said nothing important at all, like she didn’t make me start to sweat. Twirling one of her wild curls around her finger she adds, “I wouldn’t be surprised if the family started getting superstitious.”
For the first time, I feel truly guilty about not being home. Maybe I should have been there this whole time. Maybe I was wrong to leave.
She walks off to bring a pot of coffee and some thick ceramic mugs over to the other table, and I get up. Forget breakfast, I need to get home.
I cut through some service roads that weave through the woods to get there, the rain never letting up. The urgency in my chest doesn’t ease up until I’m passing the wide stretches of my old neighbors’ farm acreage, and I’m at the start of the long driveway up to the house.
Home, when it hasn’t been home in so, so long.
The house looks the same as it ever did, maybe the porch finally looks fixed. I don’t recognize all the cars out front, there’s some new flowers planted in the garden beds.
My youngest brother is in the driveway, taking out the trash when I start to crest the hill. It takes a moment to recognize him, the way he’s filled out his scrawny bones, the fact that he’s cut his hair short. He still dresses like a kid though, with his superhero T-shirts and fuzzy pajama pants in the middle of the day.
A smile breaks out across his face when he sees me, and that eases my hackles a little.
“DUDE,” Aiden booms, jogging across the gravel drive to meet me.
I’m barely out of the car when he leaps into my arms like he half-meant to tackle me, and I drop my bag to the ground with him. It’s messy and a little awkward, but the heart is there. At least someone is happy I’m here.
“How is everyone?” I ask, clapping a hand against his shoulder.
“They’re all inside,” he says, not quite the question I asked. “We’re still doing all the wedding prep stuff, and I’m, uh—”
“You were hiding out here,” I finish for him, and he gives a bashful laugh, nodding.
“We should go in—oh, wipe your feet out here, Mom will go postal if we track dirt inside again. She’s been, well, you know. She’s Mom.”
He wrinkles his nose, giving me a knowing look. I can only imagine what it’s been like to share a roof with her while she fusses over planning and preparation. Homesickness twists in my chest with that hint of bitterness.
He grabs my backpack up off the ground, and I follow him inside.
“GUESS WHO’S HERE,” Aiden bellows as he throws open the front door, kicking his shoes off on the welcome mat; flecks of muddy water still make it onto the polished tile.
The light that hangs from the high ceiling sways a little at the sheer volume of his entrance, the only response.
It looks the same as it always did, but cleaner. The front hall is empty, but the hardwood floors are shiny, and the room is overpowered by the scent of lemony cleaning products.
“That’s a little disappointing.”
“Pssh. Mom’ll go nuts once you see her.”
I hang my bag up with the rest of the raincoats, since it’s wet. The same way I did for years and years. It’s strangely easy to just come home. Like the last eight years was nothing at all.
“Where is Mom?”
The further I step into the house, the more it smells like home, but there’s something warmer about it. Like cinnamon and nutmeg, and something unplaceable. It’s familiar, but it makes me feel a little on edge. My heart’s still hammering in my chest, the tension winding tighter when it should be easing up.
“I think they’re all still in the dining room.” Aiden shrugs, and heads that way,
“Everyone?” I repeat, because the word gives me pause as I follow him. “Hey, when am I going to meet Logan’s fiancée—”
I cut myself off, the breath knocked out me when my eyes fall on her. My heart stops short, like it knew ahead of me that I was about to go over a cliff.
There, in the dining room with the rest of my family, is my wife.