*This story’s a sequel to last year’s May story, “The Bridge.” I’ve never written a sequel before, but every time I sat down, I just couldn’t get Allie and Michael out of my head. I don’t know if, even now, they’re quite done with me. We’ll see, but in the meantime, enjoy!*

–The Return–

It’s May, almost June. It’s hot. The leaves, just grown and bright green, already droop and sag and wilt and wrinkle under the blistering sun. I have not missed this. I dread more days of it, while we’re here.

“Supposed to hit 100 today,” says my brother.

I prop my head against the window. With the air conditioning blowing so close to it, for just a second, it feels cool against my sticky skin.

My brother drives. I count the road signs. And together, we make our way home.

There’s somewhere I’m supposed to be.

The thought hit me out of nowhere on the flight here, and it won’t let go.

Of course, I tell myself, there’s somewhere I’m supposed to be. We’re going home together from our separate cities, to visit our sick father and divide up assets in the house where we grew up. The only thing my brother wants is Dad’s old red and white Ford truck. That should make things easy, because the only thing I want is to get this over with.

I don’t want anything, is what I’m saying.

I’ve never been a collector. I don’t like being weighed down with stuff. My corner apartment is constantly filled with sunlight, the constant, churning whirlpool of my anxiety, and little else. Clutter makes me nervous. I just want to see Dad, hug him, and say goodbye.

“Allie…”

I jerk my head upright. I’d started to doze. I feel a trickle of warm drool on my chin.

“You’re supposed to be watching for the exit,” Michael reminds me.

“You’re not going to miss it,” I answer, because he won’t. I wouldn’t either.

The pull of Dad’s little red brick ranch-style house tugs at both of us, always. It’s brought us back together over and over. It’s brought me here from London now, and Michael from Seattle, that modest house in the middle of a nowhere neighborhood outside of a nowhere town. It’s hooked us both.

It will be the hardest thing we talk about, this weekend: What we’re going to do with it.

Dad’s house saved our family after our mother died. It kept us whole and safe, gave Michael and me a place to explore. It made Dad a handyman, a gardener, and a better father. But at the end of the day, it’s four walls and some windows, two doors and a bedroom that doesn’t belong to me anymore.

There’s somewhere I’m supposed to be.

I look over at Michael, his face as serene and still as a sleeping baby, and wonder what he’s thinking.

I ask instead, “Should we stop for gas before we hit town?”

“No, we’re good,” he says. “But if it’s okay, there is one stop I’d like to make.”

I know where he’s taking us. I don’t have to ask.

There’s somewhere I’m supposed to be.

We’re thinking of the same place, a dirt path and a bridge, a fork and two sycamores, and a house that’s always there but never the same. When it’s even there at all.

On the tip of my tongue, I can almost taste strawberry ice cream. And in the pocket of his dark wash jeans, I’m certain Michael has stowed away a hand-carved wooden fox.

We’re not certain, haven’t been in years, if the people we met and the house we visited ever really existed. We were sad kids, motherless too young, trying on a whole new life. Did we make it up?

Does it even matter?

We’ve talked about it a few times in the decades since, but only with each other. Who would believe us, when we’re not even sure we believe it ourselves? And again, does it even matter? It brought us together when we were lost, gave us a mystery, left us feeling touched by magic. We’re lucky, I think, even if we’re delusional.

“Do you really want to know if it’s not there?”

We’re at the exit now, and Michael turns the wheel a little too sharply. The car lurches around the turn before we settle onto the winding road into town.

“It’ll bother me forever if we don’t check. Who knows if we’ll ever come back here, once Dad’s gone.”

He’s not wrong, but, “What if we made the whole thing up?”

“Do you really believe that, Allie?”

I shake my head. No, I think. But maybe.

There’s somewhere I’m supposed to be.

My hands start to tremble.

“We’ll be fine either way,” I say.

But my voice gives me away. It trembles, too. I don’t know why I’m nervous.

We drive through town, a still charming collection of turn of the century store fronts and tree-lined sidewalks. This town never changes. It just gets older. We turn onto the gravel road that will take us to Dad’s house. And to the dirt path, too. At least, I hope it will. Michael pulls over at a wide spot, and for a moment, neither of us moves.

“We could just go on,” I say.

“Fraidy-cat,” he calls me.

“You’re being mean,” I tell him.

I open my door first. I am not a fraidy-cat, and these days, neither is Michael. He jumps out faster than I can, and comes around to my side. Together, we walk.

And suddenly, there it is. Michael notices it first, and quickens his pace.

“It’s here,” he says, and in his voice, I can hear relief.

My feet won’t move.

There’s somewhere I’m supposed to be.

“Michael,” I whisper, careful to control my tone, to hide the frantic hitch in my throat “I think we should just go on to Dad’s.”

“Allie, I have to know.”

“Why? Why is it so important to you?” I ball my hands into fists. I fight the urge to raise them to my chest, to plead with him. “What does it change?”

“I don’t know,” he answers. “I don’t know, but I know I have to do this. I have to find out.”

“I can’t,” I say. I hang my head. I feel the tears coming before they start. I wipe them away before they fall. “I need to go.”

I turn on my heel and beat an unsteady path back to our rented sedan.

“Allie!” Michael is only a few steps behind me.

“I’m going on ahead,” I manage. “You can walk to Dad’s from here.”

There’s somewhere I’m supposed to be.

“There’s somewhere I’m supposed to be,” I finally say, out loud, “and it isn’t here, in the past.”

I stop and turn to face my brother. His chin is high, his brows are set and his mouth cuts across his face like a thin blade. He won’t budge on this. Neither will I. We’re stubborn, both of us. Who knows which of us is right.

“Fine,” he finally bites out.

“I don’t want to know what you find,” I tell him. “I’ll see you at Dad’s.”

He leaves me by the car.

There’s somewhere I’m supposed to be.                                                                    

I get in, turn the key, and drive forward.

************

Thank you for reading! This is the fifth of twelve stories I’ll write as part of my 2021 Short Story Challenge. Twelve months, twelve stories, and the theme this year is: Home.

Here are the first three stories, if you’d like to read them: 

The Roads

This Place

Talk Out the Fire

Quiet Neighbors

And if you want to join in the fun, here’s more information. I hope you do! But just reading is good, too, and I’m glad you’re here!

The next story will be posted at the end of June.

There were seven of us in the beginning. Ada, with her gray hair and storm cloud eyes, and June, who loved to laugh and to sing. There were Tilson and Thomas, the stoic farmer brothers, and Clancy, withered and whiskered, always with a flask in his jacket pocket. And then little Marie, a freckled thing with bright gold ringlets and a toothy grin. And of course, me.

It took me a little while to get used to things, but I’ve got a knack for making quick adjustments.

“You could save the whole world with a toothpick and some twine,” my mother always told me. “If only you’d keep you head out of the clouds.”

Yes, there was that. I’ve always been practical, but a dreamer. There never really was a good place for me, and so this new place was as good as any, and over the years, I became the storyteller, the collector, in a way, for all of us. I figured somebody should keep it all straight, and maybe embellish it a little, because what would that hurt, really. We weren’t going anywhere, that was for sure.

In the early days, we sometimes had visitors. They never stayed long, and eventually, they stopped coming altogether. It was just us, and we settled into the way things were.

Some nights, June and I waltzed under the moon and sang ballads for the stars.

“You crooner,” she purred, and flipped her long dark hair over her shoulder. It waved down her back, an obsidian river. “Some theater sure is missing its main attraction.”

I agreed.

And Marie. Marie, all of six and proud of it. Ada tried to tame her curls every day, and in the evenings, June sang her old lullabies. She liked to chase the lizards in the spring. She liked their bright blue tails. And she liked the bluebells. Every April, we’d find ourselves surrounded by the bluebells, growing in every direction.

“Blue’s my favorite, like the sky,” Marie always said, as she touched each cluster of flowers one by one.

Over the years, our number grew, though never by much at a time and ultimately not by much at all. We added Dorothy, a baker with red-tipped fingers, and Joseph, tall and proud with his chest covered in military medals.

“That little girl needs discipline,” he said once, not long after he’d arrived, as we watched Marie chase the fireflies.

“She needs more than she’ll ever have,” Clancy told him. “Reminds me of my own little girl.”

Then came the married couple, Henry and Abigail, who sniped at each other constantly but always held hands.

There were a few others, but they stayed away. If we saw them at all, which we rarely did, they’d seldom even tilt their heads in greeting. Ada didn’t much care for that. She called them rude. I told her they had every right to keep to themselves. “It’s not easy for everyone,” I said.

They were good years, and eventually we came to understand that the world had mostly forgotten us. But we had each other, our own makeshift family, and if you have a family, you have a home. And if you have a home, then you have a whole world right where you are. Though I won’t lie. It always irked me a little that I’d never see the ocean, or the Eiffel Tower.

I suppose things had been changing for a long time before we noticed. I imagine that the fields got smaller, that the houses got larger and people built more of them, and we just didn’t give it much thought. What did it matter to us, after all, if someone built a new house or cut down a tree? We were apart from all of that.

“It’s not our place to worry,” Dorothy said. “I did enough of that for three lifetimes, and I’m not about to give in to an old bad habit when I’ve earned a modicum of peace and quiet.”

It was the noise that changed things. It got to all of us, eventually. The constant hum of motors, the banging of a hundred hammers, the whir of drills and the scrape of saws. It started to drive us crazy, especially Dorothy.

“All that racket!” She stomped and seethed. “Damn it, I earned my peace! I earned it!”

And just as quickly as it seemed to have started, it was over.

And things were different.

“Do you suppose they forgot we’re here?” Ada shook her head. “Surely not.”

“I reckon they don’t care,” said Thomas.

“There aren’t all that many of us, and the weeds cover most everything. Wish I had my garden hoe,” added Tilson.

“Wouldn’t do much good,” Thomas said. “The weeds are too thick for that.”

I looked around, and realized he was right. Green Virginia creeper snaked all around us, blanketed the ground and rested over every gray stone surface.

“They’re awfully close together.” This from Joseph, sharp eyes forward and focused.

“I suppose it makes for fast friends,” offered June, with a small smile.

“More like enemies,” answered Clancy. “Won’t be any secrets kept, packed in that way. Like animals in a cage. No way to live.”

“What does it mean for us?” June looked over at me. “Will things change?”

“Things don’t change for us,” I told her.

I looked out ahead of us. Over the years, we’d seen young trees grow old, seasons and seasons of bluebells and snowstorms. We’d seen children play, and later return to play with their own children. That had been hardest for Marie. We’d watched, we’d witnessed, and no one knew. Now, we’d watch this, this seemingly endless sea of houses, and all of the people who lived in them. I didn’t know what we’d see, but we’d watch, as we always had, and we’d be here, and just like always, no one would ever know.

“Things don’t change for us,” I repeated, “and we’ll certainly be here longer than they will.” I thought for a moment, remembered the early days and the days after, and added, “Hopefully they’ll at least be quiet neighbors.”

************

Thank you for reading! This is the fourth of twelve stories I’ll write as part of my 2021 Short Story Challenge. Twelve months, twelve stories, and the theme this year is: Home.

Here are the first three stories, if you’d like to read them: 

The Roads

This Place

Talk Out the Fire

And if you want to join in the fun, here’s more information. I hope you do! But just reading is good, too, and I’m glad you’re here!

The next story will be posted at the end of May.