Jordan supposed she should have expected that, and to some degree, she’d been prepared. She’d figured maybe the old pizza place that had been a standard for after high school sporting events might have changed hands—hopefully to a kitchen staff that actually bothered to melt the cheese. She’d figured there was a decent chance that a Panera or Starbucks had made its way into town. Or that the used-book shop that was unpopular even twenty years ago might have closed its doors.
What Jordan wasn’t prepared for, however, was that the town felt completely shut down and—if she was being honest—a little sad.
The pizza place wasn’t a pizza place anymore—it wasn’t anything but a boarded-up building. Around the corner, there was a tired-looking Burger King. The bookstore was now a tattoo parlor, and a sketchy-looking one at that.
And still, even with all of the changes, the memories hit her hard, although…they were not unwelcome.
Instead of steeling herself against the pain, she welcomed it. Welcomed the memory of sniffing all the perfumes at the corner drugstore while her mom picked up her father’s heartburn prescription. Welcomed the memory of flirting with Danny Galloway outside the bookstore. Remembered making snow angels in the middle of the road during a particularly epic snowstorm when the schools had been closed and fire trucks blocked off the main drag so that kids could play.
She remembered her dad teaching her to drive on the back roads, remembered gossiping with her girlfriends over pineapple pizza and Diet Coke, remembered the way even the grumpiest of store owners went all out with twinkle lights at Christmastime.
She remembered, and for the first time in a long time, it didn’t hurt. It was simply…a part of her.
Nobody paid her an
y attention, and that was just fine. Jordan hadn’t told anyone she was coming, but, then, her best girlfriends weren’t even here anymore. A couple of them had moved to Des Moines, another to Omaha.
There were a handful of casual childhood friends still in town, but she didn’t really keep in touch with anyone beyond the usual Congrats! comment on Facebook posts about marriages and babies.
And Jordan’s spontaneous trip to Keaton wasn’t about socializing. It was about…
Well, heck. She wasn’t even sure.
She’d known within only minutes of arriving in New York that she needed to close this door to her past. To let her memories of this small town be comfortable rather than like the painful ones she ran away from.
Jordan thanked the bored-looking barista for the coffee and walked out into the rainy afternoon. She made a conscious effort not to wince as she took a sip of the latte.
It was…not good.
But she’d wanted something warm—something to hold—as she made her next stop, and a familiar vanilla latte had seemed as good as anything.
The drive was shorter than she remembered. Or maybe it was just over before she was ready to face what lay ahead.
Jordan breathed deeply as she took a left onto the familiar gravel road. When Jordan was growing up, the Carpenters had only one neighbor. Mrs. Hadey had been cranky, and a little mean, but Jordan’s parents always said she was merely lonely and had made a big deal of buying several jars of Mrs. Hadey’s homemade jam.
Jordan slowed a little as she passed the small yellow farmhouse across the way, which had survived the tornado that her house had not. It had boarded-up windows, the paint was chipped and faded, and the aged FOR SALE sign indicated that it had probably been vacant for quite a while.
She inhaled, held her breath for several seconds, then slowly forced her car forward, farther down the drive, until she got to…
Nothingness.
It was the emptiness that broke her, a wrenching sob tearing out of her as she gazed at the spot where her home had once been.
Here’s where the memories would hurt, she realized. Here was the hard part. Remembering not just the joy of Christmas morning as a child but the agony of the moment she realized there’d be no more Christmas mornings with her family. Remembering the casual family dinners she’d taken for granted, and, oh, what she wouldn’t give to go back in time and have her mom snap at her to eat her green beans, just one more time. She wanted it all. The laughter, the quiet moments, even the fights.
One more day. That’s all she wanted.
She wouldn’t get it, but it was okay to want it. A little bit of pain was better than being hollow.
There were regrets, of course, and she let those in. Not just about what had happened but that there was no new life in this spot. There should be. It shouldn’t still be the pile of rubble it had been on that awful day when the police car had driven her to her house—or what was left of it.
If only her family had lived close enough to town to hear the tornado warnings, if only they had paid attention to the radio like they were supposed to…
But they hadn’t. And they were gone, all three of them, killed by the worst tornado that had hit Kansas in years. After the tornado, Jordan had moved in with her aging uncle. She’d lived with him until her high school graduation a few months later, and he’d taken care of the cleanup after the disaster, as she hadn’t been able to bring herself to be a part of it.
Once she turned eighteen, it had been up to her what to do with the property. A local realtor put it up for sale at her request, but even back then, a patch of not-great farmland that far out of town hadn’t held much appeal. Even less now.
Her brain had known all of this, but seeing it—feeling it—was something else entirely.