I shook my head. “God, I always swore once I got the hell out of this town, I was never coming back.”
There weren’t officially tracks to be on the wrong side of. Just a highway.
If you grew up on the wrong side of I-75, well then, you got to go to the shit public schools, and your parents likely worked at one of the shops that served the rich, took care of their kids… or, like my mom, cleaned their houses and all but wiped the shit from their asses.
Mrs. H nodded with understanding. “But here you are.”
I looked at her deadpan. “Not by choice.”
She smiled at that. “Oh, love, I’d give fair wages to bet it’s circumstances, not choice, that land many a lassie in this town.”
I frowned. What was that supposed to mean?
She waved a hand as if seeing and dismissing the question in my eyes. “Oh, thank you. Is that tea for me?”
I smiled and passed her the Earl Gray I knew she loved. “You haven’t changed in all these years?”
She laughed. “I’m an institution, lass. Institutions don’t change.”
I scoffed at that. “You’re only in your sixties. You’re hardly growing cobwebs.”
She just arched an eyebrow, then sat down and settled herself in the seat across the table from me. “Now tell me all about you. You went off and got yourself a fancy education all the way on the other coast! Sunny California!”
I grimaced. “A fancy education in a field no one seems to care about since I can’t find a job.”
Mrs. H nodded in concern. “Your mama said. I’ve heard it’s hard out there for your generation. And then you and your young man didn’t work out either.”
My man. I swallowed and looked down into my coffee.
It was spring in Darlington. There was still a chill in the air and the smell of recent rain. Everything was so shockingly familiar even after having been gone almost five years. I expected it all to be so different, to feel like a foreign country after all the changes I’d been through, after how I’d evolved and grown and—
I huffed out a breath. And yet the second I stepped back in town, I felt like the same little girl who’d run away all those years ago, betrayed and hurt beyond belief by the one person who I thought would always have my back—
“No, it didn’t work out,” I said, setting my coffee back down on the table harder than I’d meant to, sloshing a little over the side. I bit back a curse just in time. Mama H hated swearing, and I doubted me being a grown woman would stop her from smacking my wrist for it.
You and your young man. Her words echoed in my head. No, we hadn’t worked out. We’d been close. I’d thought Jeoffrey was the one for me, for a time. He was a wonderful man. He was kind. He was stable. He’d tried to understand me. He’d asked me to marry him.
I’d been prepared to say yes. We’d talked about our future together.
We’d get a little place together in the Bay Area. He’d continue his law degree and I’d work on my studio art. It would be a beautiful life.
Except when he popped the question, what came out of my mouth?
NO.
No, I could not marry Jeoffrey Brown from San Francisco, California.
Because I was still stuck, my heart and my soul tangled in the heavy ivy and brambles of the deep South. I wasn’t free to move forwards until I’d gone back. God how I hated it, but it was true.
I never completely understood it, but I was drawn back to this place as surely as a yoyo tied to a string. I just knew I wouldn’t have any peace until I came back. A deep thorn had embedded itself in my heart here, and I’d never be free until I cut open the original wound and worked that shit out.
Then maybe I could heal. Then maybe I could finally be whole.
Dear God, please. Please, I want to be whole. I wanted more for my life than just walking around half-formed, being unable to really love anyone else, only half able to love myself. I was so tired of being angry at everyone, angry at my mother, angry at this town, at the world. Angry at God.
“You seem… unsettled, lassie.”
I jerked my eyes up to meet Mrs. H’s concerned ones. Shit. How could I have forgotten where I was and whom I was sitting with? She was always so attuned. Nothing ever got past her.
“I’m fine,” I lied. “Just back for awhile after college. I thought I’d spend some time with Mom while I look for work. Everything’s online these days so I figured I might as well hang out with her while I apply for jobs.”