It was because of my sister.
My family had always supported me. Though all of them had made it very clear how much they hated where I’d chosen to take my job. Or where my job had taken me. Every email from my mother or father had some kind of subtle yet pleading message to come home.
It was selfish of me really, putting them through over a decade of that. Of wondering whether they’d wake up to news of my death, rather than me reporting on others. It was cruel. And I loved my family fiercely, would do anything for them. Anything but that. Other than come home to safety and familiarity. Because I had to go and stare death in the face. Because it was staring at me no matter where I went anyway.
But my latest trip home was when my sister announced, quietly and with glassy eyes, that she was pregnant for the third time.
After two miscarriages.
And years of trying.
Thousands in IVF.
“I waited this time,” she said, smoothing her hand over her shirt, and the now prominent bump visible through the tight cotton. “We’ve never gotten this far.” She paused, eyes glittering with a pain that had settled in those topaz irises since she and James had started trying three years ago. Something shimmered, shook, rippling that sadness. Not quite chasing it away, but battling it just the same.
Hope.
“This time’s different,” she said, voice firm. “I know it. And I’m not going to bring my baby into a world that has a high chance of you not being in it.” She snatched my hand and placed it on the fullness of her belly. It was warm, comforting. Something pulsed in my oh-so-very empty womb. “You’re going to meet your niece,” she said.
I glared at her, or at least I tried to, through my happiness. “This is emotional blackmail.”
She nodded. “I don’t care. I’ll do anything and everything in my power to get my baby sister out of a war zone.”
I gritted my teeth. My mother’s tears, pleas, my father’s stoic silences with worried eyes and my brother’s shouts hadn’t swayed me in the past. But the warm roundness of my sister’s belly, of my niece growing inside her, it cut through it all.
I snatched my hand back though I ached to leave it there. “You’re always a bitch until you get your own way.”
She grinned. “So you’re staying.”
I chased away the panic that came with the reality and nodded once. “I’m staying.”
So I stayed.
For my sister.
For my unborn niece.
For my mother.
Father.
Brother.
But not for myself. And not for the love of my life that I buried almost fifteen years ago.
First, I went back home. To Castle Springs, where I had my apartment with the dead plants and lack of personality.
Where I went for a handful of weeks at a time between assignments.
Hometowns were a funny thing.
Thomas Wolfe said you can’t go home again.
And that wasn’t quite true for me.
I did go home. I could’ve stayed there. Surrounded by my family, mountains, sunshine. In a town that hadn’t realized the world had changed into something dark and scary. A town where people still kept their houses unlocked and children rode their bikes down the street without fear. That’s exactly what going home was for me, welcoming a life without fear.
A safe life.
I could still freelance. Write lifestyle pieces. My best friend was an agent in New York, who always got me in front of the right people.
If I’d stayed, I likely would’ve met a safe, reliable man, with family values and no dreams of leaving the town he grew up in. He’d give me a nice life, because most men were raised right in Castle Springs, Alabama, a town with Southern values as strong as its sweet tea. I’d give him babies, and I’d live in an empty kind of happiness.
But instead of that, instead of empty happiness, I came here, chasing bursting sorrow and pain. Because as much as I loved my sister, my family, the uncomplicated peace of my hometown, I wasn’t designed for it. I feared it would kill me quicker than any war zone could. Whatever parts of me were left.
“Caroline!”
The shout jerked me out of my stupor.
I glanced to Henry, the heavyset, tattooed manager of the bar. Not a patched member, but a friend of the club they’d employed to run the place. He was gruff, used fuck as a comma but was reasonable and had a quick dry wit.
We got along well.
“Get your fuckin’ ass movin’, I told you to get the fuck outta here twenty minutes ago,” he continued shouting. “You’ve been workin’ until close all week, I’m commanding you to have a life.”
I grinned at him. “You’re not a genie, you can’t command shit.”
He raised a bushy brow. “If I was a genie, think I’d be in this fuckin’ shithole? Now go. Before I change my mind and decide to grant one of Claw’s wishes.”