I told myself it was because a phone call after ten years of silence would be its own kind of cruelty, too much to say into a receiver, but the truth was closer to fear.

I was afraid that if I called, they would tell me not to come, and I was afraid that if they told me not to come, I would obey.

So we simply drove.

Grace watched the landscape change out the window, the flat familiar fields of my childhood scrolling past the window, the same fields I had watched blur through tears the day I left, and she asked me questions about the house and the town and the people we were going to see, and I answered them as best I could while my hands tightened on the wheel with every mile that brought us closer.

I had left this place at nineteen with a duffel bag and a broken heart, certain I would never come back.