Chapter 3
Benjamin Lawrence turned right onto the little two-lane highway toward Clay Creek, his mood worsening with every mile.
It’s just a few weeks, he said to himself.
That was the mantra he’d been repeating since the second he’d gotten that phone call from that Realtor, reminding him that
there were still things in the house that might be, in her words, “important to the family.”
Reminding him of the promise he’d made to his dead mother.
He was the family now, and he’d nearly told the woman to sell everything; he didn’t care about what was in there, but deep
down, he knew that wasn’t the truth. He’d promised his mother before she died that he’d go back at least once and spend some
time there. She’d known he wouldn’t keep the house, so this was her compromise, her way of blessing the inevitable.
He couldn’t break that promise to her now.
But going back to Clay Creek? Well, it wasn’t exactly on the list of things he wanted to do... ever. He’d put it off for
two years. Every time the Realtor called, he said he wasn’t ready, but the truth was, once he agreed to sell, he knew that
also meant he had to go back.
It wasn’t that he hated Clay Creek. In truth, he hadn’t. But he’d also never wanted to move there—hadn’t wanted to leave his friends in Chicago. He’d promised himself that when he had the chance, he’d go back. He’d go to college and start a career in a town with more than 5,000 people. It was a promise he’d kept.
Mylie had been his first friend in Clay Creek. She wasn’t his only friend—he’d been friends with several other kids in town,
but none of them had been like Mylie. Ben tried not to close his eyes and think about her as he drove. Ten years was a long
time, but he could still see her face in his mind, hear her laugh, and if he really concentrated, sometimes he swore he could
still smell that perfume she always wore. In fact, occasionally, a woman would pass him in Chicago wearing that same scent,
and he’d have to fight the urge to turn around and follow her just in case she was, in fact, Mylie.
He didn’t follow anyone, of course, because that would have been creepy. It was the same reason he refused to look Mylie up
on any social media, refused to let her know he was returning to Clay Creek just in case she still lived there. He doubted
very much that she ever even thought about him. It would have been weird to tell her, to expect that she would care, not after
all this time.
Ben straightened in his seat. Besides, none of that mattered. He wasn’t the same person he’d been back then. He’d just finished
his PhD and had a job offer from a prestigious university, which was exactly why he was selling. He needed the money for the
move.
He was finally where he wanted to be in his life. He was on the verge of being a respected member in the field of economics.
He had plenty of friends. He dated plenty of women, which had been a welcome perk to his late-as-hell physical evolution his
sophomore year in college. He was a goddamn adult, for fuck’s sake. Why was he dreading this so much?
Ben tried to relax, rolling his neck and loosening his death grip on the steering wheel. This wasn’t going to be anything
at all. The town might still be the same, but he wasn’t.
This wasn’t a trip back to his past. It was an obligation, another job he had to complete, and once he was done, he’d leave Clay Creek in his rearview for the last time and never look back.
He pulled into the gas station just outside of town to fill up and grab a few snacks. This late, most places would already
be closed. He remembered that much from his time in Clay Creek. When he’d first moved here, that had been one of the hardest
things to get used to—the way everything pretty much shut down after eight p.m. In Chicago, that just wasn’t the way the city
operated. It wasn’t, he’d learned later, the way any city operated. But small towns were different, especially in Arkansas.
The woman behind the counter looked up from her phone when Ben entered. He tried to give her a friendly smile, but she eyed
him with suspicion as he made his way around the stacks of junk food, grabbing enough to get him through the night.
“Help ya find something?” she asked, standing up and leaning over the counter to watch him. “Don’t get too many people out
this way after dark.”
Ben eyed the coffeepot, trying to decide just how long that coffee had been sitting there. “I’m okay,” he said. “Just grabbing
a few things before heading into town.”
“Mmmhmm,” the woman replied. “That coffee ain’t fresh.”
“I’ll just take these, then,” Ben said, unloading his armful of snacks.
The woman picked up a package of powdered sugar doughnuts. “You local?”
“Not really,” Ben replied.
The woman narrowed her eyes at him. “You look familiar, but I can’t place ya.”
Ben sighed. He hadn’t prepared himself for these kinds of questions yet. He figured he’d at least have the night to decompress before he had to explain himself. “I used to live here,” he said, “about a decade ago.”
“What brings you back to town?”
“Just visiting,” Ben replied, hoping this was the end of the conversation. All he wanted to do was rip into that package of
doughnuts.
“You still got people here?” she asked.
“Not anymore,” Ben said.
She grunted and continued to scan. Ben felt maybe a little bad about not being more forthcoming, but honestly, he was out
of practice with small-town small talk. He was no longer used to people asking who he was or where he was going or who he
was related to. Most of the time, he was able to go into a gas station without saying a word to anyone.
“Wait,” the woman said as she bagged his snacks. “I know you. You’re Emily’s boy. Shit, you’ve grown up real nice. Real nice .”
Ben cleared his throat. “Um, thank you.”
“Sure thing, sugar. You have a great night.”
Ben nodded to her and took his bag. He wondered if he’d even make it into Clay Creek before the whole town knew he was back.