Ethan had grown up here, played little league at the park three blocks over, got his first kiss behind the library, graduated from the high school that still looked exactly the same, except for a fresh coat of paint on the gymnasium. He’d left at 18, desperate to see something bigger than these treeline streets and friendly waves from neighbors who knew your business before you did.
Now he was back, and he wasn’t sure if that made him a failure or just someone who’d finally stopped running. Daddy, there’s a lady looking at us. Ethan followed Cameron’s gaze across the street and felt something catch in his chest. Lena Brooks stood on her front porch, one hand shading her eyes from the afternoon sun, wearing jeans and a faded college sweatshirt that hung loose on her frame.
Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail. And even from this distance, Ethan could see the slight smile on her face, the same smile she’d given him a thousand times when they were kids. when she’d skateboard past his house on summer evenings and he’d watch from the window, too shy to do anything except wave.
She raised her hand now in that same gesture, a simple hello that somehow felt like an acknowledgement of everything that had changed and everything that hadn’t. Ethan lifted his hand in response, suddenly aware of how he must look. 30 lb heavier than the last time she’d seen him, his face harder, his eyes carrying the kind of weight that came from seeing things you couldn’t unsee.
The boy who’d left Maple Ridge had been full of ambition and certainty. The man who’d come back was just trying to keep his head above water. Lena didn’t cross the street. She just stood there for a moment, that soft smile, never wavering, then turned and went back inside her house. “Do you know her?” Cameron asked.
“Yeah,” Ethan said quietly. “We grew up together.” “Is she nice?” “Very nice.” Good. Cameron tugged on Ethan’s hand. Can we go inside now? I’m hungry. Ethan let his son pull him toward the front door, fumbling with the keys that the estate lawyer had sent him 3 months ago. The lock stuck. It always had, and he had to jiggle the key twice before the door swung open with a familiar creek.
The smell hit him immediately. Dust and old wood and something faintly sweet that he couldn’t quite place. His mother’s poperri may be still sitting in bowls throughout the house, even though she’d been gone for 2 years. The furniture was covered in sheets. The floors needed sweeping, and water stains marked the ceiling in the living room where the roof had leaked last winter.
It was a mess, but it was theirs. “Wo!” Cameron breathed, his eyes wide as he took in the high ceilings and the staircase that curved up to the second floor. “It’s like a castle. More like a fixer upper, Ethan muttered, but he couldn’t help the small smile that tugged at his mouth. Come on, let’s find your room.
They spent the next hour exploring the house, opening doors and pulling sheets off furniture and trying to remember where everything belonged. Cameron claimed the bedroom at the end of the upstairs hall, the one that had been Ethan’s as a kid, and immediately started unpacking his toys with the single-minded focus that only a 5-year-old could muster.
Ethan left him to it and went back downstairs, standing in the kitchen and trying to figure out where to start. The refrigerator was empty, except for a box of baking soda. The cabinets held mismatched dishes, and a few cans of soup that had probably expired during the first Bush administration. The whole place needed cleaning, organizing, a fresh coat of paint, new appliances, probably a new roof if he was being honest with himself.
