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I maneuvered the Toyota along the winding, tree-lined route that brought me closer to Woodridge. As I looked around, I began to notice things I hadn’t thought of in years. I marveled at the fact that I hadn’t passed another car for at least half a mile. In New York, there was a constant barrage of people at all hours of the day or night. I’d forgotten how nice this kind of solitude could be. Gray clouds swirled above me, threatening to open up. I didn’t mind the showers.
The saltiness of the ocean air tickled my nose as it wafted through the car’s vents. It amazed me, the way an aroma could bring back a memory. The simple fragrance of the salty air carried with it a lifetime of emotion. The maritime breeze smelled like my childhood, ushering in memories both bitter and sweet. It was almost intoxicating; the smell impaired my judgement, turning me from the sophisticated woman I appeared to be into the uncertain girl I once was. In reality, I knew they were the same; my façade of accomplishment was simply a mask I wore to hide from the rest of the world. I was a strange, mixed-up combination of confidence and uncertainty, always trying to piece the fragments together. I’d never really fit in anywhere; my awkwardness forever caused me to feel like an imposter in my own skin.
The sound of my phone startled me out of my reverie. I pulled over to the side of the road and answered Kelsey’s call.
“Sweetie, how are you doing?” Kelsey’s voice cut through the silence of the car.
“Well, I’m alive, whatever that means.” I sighed.
“How close are you?” She knew how much I didn’t want to go home.
“I’m much closer than I’d like to be.” My voice quivered.
“I know you don’t want to do this, Hope. I know there are things in Woodridge you don’t want to face. But it’s been ten years, honey. It’s time.”
“I know, Kel. I just don’t want to go back to the place where I made the biggest mistake of my life. You know I’m an expert in avoiding my feelings. There will be no avoiding them there.” That was really the crux of the matter.
“This is going to be good for you. Just wait and see. Trust me on this.” Kelsey, my oldest and dearest friend in the world, tried to soothe my unraveling nerves.
“We’ll see. I should keep driving.” I didn’t want to talk about any of this.
“Okay, I’ll call you tomorrow and check in. Love you,” she replied.
“Love you too. Bye, Kel.” I hung up the phone and pulled the car back onto the road.
My pulse quickened when I realized I was only about twenty minutes away from town. With a pounding heart, I tried to calm my nerves, but there was no escaping the fact that I was terrified. I fumbled inside my handbag again for the medication, and for a moment I contemplated taking one.
“Don’t be weak, Hope,” I scolded myself as I dropped the pills back inside the bag. This situation was perfect for the onset of an attack. I was trying desperately not to allow myself to cross that line. Instead of medication, I attempted to use the visualization technique my therapist had suggested, but the only thing I could visualize was the mess that awaited me in Woodridge.
As I drove through town, I realized immediately that nothing had changed in the ten years I’d been gone. The tiny coastal town looked exactly as I had left it. The cedar-shingled buildings were weathered and worn from the salty mist of the sea. I passed Louise’s Breakfast House, the run-down, yellow shack that didn’t look like much on the outside, but served the best French toast I’d ever tasted in my life. During the busy season, a line of hungry customers wrapped its way around the block each morning. Since it was only March, the doors were locked and it was dark inside. I continued driving and saw Salvatore’s Pizza, a local favorite and one of my frequent haunts when I was a teenager. Salvatore’s stayed busy year-round; it was one of the few restaurants that always had a crowd.
I continued to the end of Main Street and took a left onto Cranberry Lane. As I drew closer to my mother’s house, my palms began to sweat profusely. I wiped them on my pants in an attempt to dry them. I was just around the block, and I knew there was no turning back. This was the neighborhood that had shaped and formed me. It was the first place I’d experienced love, and the same place I’d learned about its devastating loss.
My sadness at being there again was very real, but so was a strange sense of coming full circle. I pulled into the driveway of my childhood home, and felt like I was in the middle of a dream. Amazingly, it looked exactly the same as it had the day I’d driven away in search of a new life.
“What do you mean you’re getting married? You’re only eighteen!” my mother shouted as we stood in the driveway.
“Yes, I’m eighteen. That means I can finally do what I want. I can finally get away from you. Just admit it, Mom, you’ll be glad to be rid of me. You never wanted me here in the first place,” I spat back at her.
“You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” my mother said through gritted teeth.
“You’ve never cared about me. In eighteen years, you’ve never once said you loved me. You’ve never held me. All you’ve ever done is criticize me and push me away. So you’ve finally won, Mom. You’re getting exactly what you’ve always wanted.” I grabbed my bag and started to back away from her.
“If you leave now, don’t bother coming back. Ever.” My mother’s face was as hard as stone.
“Don’t worry. Coming back here is the last thing I’ll ever do.” I pivoted on my heel and jumped into Jonathan’s waiting car. He pushed the gas and drove away.
I shook my head, trying to clear the images of the day I’d left home. I gazed at the house in front of me, not quite able to believe I was right back there. The blue-painted shutters were faded, and the cedar-shingled siding was a grayish-brown color, turned that particular hue from exposure to the salt water of the Pacific Ocean. The gigantic wraparound porch called to me, inviting me to sink into the wicker furniture where I’d spent countless hours staring out at the sea. The hammock in which I’d spent many lazy afternoons reading still hung at the edge of the porch.
I’d forgotten how much I loved the house. It wasn’t fancy; it was nearly a hundred years old, and it had so much character. It was like a living, breathing being. It welcomed me, opening its arms, assuring me that I could do what needed to be done there. How could I love a house so much when most of what had happened behind its walls was painful? I didn’t have the answer, but I loved it just the same.
I put the car in Park but didn’t get out. It was like my behind was glued to the driver seat. Fear of what was to come kept me frozen, and I knew I was stalling. I noticed that my mother’s vehicle wasn’t in the driveway and I was glad. I needed more time to muster up the courage to face her.
I looked to my right and saw the house that Kelsey had lived in when we were growing up. After she graduated and moved to Seattle, her parents sold the house and followed her. Although we only saw each other a couple of times a year, Kelsey remained my closest friend. She was my rock. It didn’t matter that Jonathan was her cousin; she’d taken my side when I told her we were getting divorced. The only upside I could find in returning to Woodridge was being geographically closer to Kelsey.
Even though I willed myself not to, my eyes darted to the left, and I saw the house where Samuel Mooney used to live. Long before my marriage to Jonathan, Sam had been my world. In an instant, I was transported back to my teenage years. Tears filled my eyes and I heard Sam’s sweet voice whisper in my ear, “I’ll love you forever, Hope. It’s you and me against the world.”
Like a flood, the joy and pain of our relationship came rushing back. How I’d loved him back then; how I loved him still. The feelings went deeper than anything I’d ever experienced. Anyone who believed a teenager couldn’t fall in love was mistaken. I was proof that it could happen. I’d given my heart to Sam as a young girl, and he’d been its true owner ever since, regardless of the fact that I’d married Jonathan.
I had no idea what happened to Sam after I left town. No one ever told me, and I didn’t ask. A part of me didn’t want to know. I had a hard time picturing Sam’s life without me in it. At this point, though, I was certainly nothing but a distant memory to him. After all, he had a family of his own. He was a father and a husband—the very reasons we were no longer together.
I tore my gaze away from the house. I wasn’t sure who lived there now. Kelsey had told me that Sam’s parents had been killed in a car accident a couple of years after we graduated, and I remembered being heartbroken when I heard the news. The last I’d heard, the house had been put up for sale. In my mind, it would always be Sam’s house. His parents had always been kind to me, especially after our breakup. They knew how devastated it had left me.
Taking a deep breath, I turned off the car and got out. I stretched my legs from the long drive and walked around to the back of the house. The view was breathtaking. Standing on the back porch, I could see straight to the Pacific Ocean. The dune grasses danced in the breeze, swaying in time to the song of the seagulls soaring above. The gentle waves lapped on the sand, and I knew the tide would come in soon. Growing up here, I had taken for granted that I had a front-row seat to some of the world’s most gorgeous scenery. Being here again, I realized how much I’d missed the peacefulness of living beside the ocean. There was a quiet tranquility here that couldn’t be found anywhere else in the world.
I wondered if the spare key was still in its old hiding place. Ideally, I wanted to get settled before my mother got home. I grabbed my suitcase from the car and carried it to the front door, lifted the doormat, and smiled when I saw the key. I wondered how many times it had been used since I left; probably never. Mom was not the forgetful type, and the spare key had been put there for my benefit. It was one of the only times I remembered her accommodating me.
I heard the roar of a car engine, and my stomach clenched in all-too-familiar anxiety. I should have been prepared to see her, but I wasn’t.
Margaret West got out of her car and looked disapprovingly at me, and I was immediately the scared little girl from my past. I gasped, noticing how ten years had changed her.
She looked smaller. In my mind, my mother was a large, imposing woman, regardless of the fact that she was physically petite. She carried herself in a way that was intimidating to people, most of all me. I was afraid of her, and she knew it. Although she’d never harmed me physically, her sharp tongue and biting words had had the same impact.
At that moment, my mother looked like a stranger to me. Time had not been kind. Her long, dark auburn hair, which had always been her best feature, was now cut short and peppered with gray. Nurses’ scrubs hung loosely on her startlingly thin frame. Tired blue eyes sank into the sockets and seemed too small in her weathered and worn face; the contours were distinct beneath skin that was stretched paper-thin. At only forty-six years old, she looked as if she could be my grandmother. The change in her appearance took me by surprise, and the sinking feeling in my stomach told me the situation was worse than I imagined.
For the millionth time since deciding to get on the plane, I questioned my choice. Returning to Woodridge might very well be the thing to send me right over the edge on which I was currently teetering; nevertheless, I’d made the conscious choice to do so. I could have remained in New York during the divorce proceedings. I had money to spare, and all of my professional connections lived in the city. My agent and publisher were both there, and quite honestly, I loved New York. The hum and buzz of the city inspired me. The obvious choice was to stay in the city that had boosted my career. Remaining in New York was my plan—until I got the phone call.
My mother’s one and only friend, Helen, had called me last week. I hadn’t spoken to her in years, and I honestly had no idea how she got my number. As soon as I heard her voice, though, I knew it was bad news. Helen told me that my mother had been diagnosed with colon cancer. She would need surgery to remove the tumor, followed by rounds of chemotherapy to ensure the disease was eradicated. I’d felt as if the wind was knocked out of me when Helen spoke the words. My life was already torn to pieces; I was barely keeping my head above water. I did not need the responsibility of my mother’s care on top of everything else.
I loved my mother because she was my mother. That’s what children did. We loved our mothers. We loved them even if they gave us no reason to do so. We loved them because, from the moment we were born, our lives were inextricably intertwined, whether or not we wanted them to be. My mother had raised me with no affection and even less acceptance. No matter what I did, it was never right. I spent most of my childhood doing anything I could to make her love me. It never worked. She was prickly as a cactus, and always kept me at arm’s length.
As a little girl, I knew she wasn’t like other mothers. When I got hurt, she told me to “shake it off and move on.” If I was upset, she reminded me that “life isn’t fair.” I learned early on that if I was looking for affection, I wouldn’t find it with her.
She was a nurse, and she worked hard to keep a roof over our heads and food in our mouths. For those things, I was grateful, but the gratitude ended there. She was impossible to please, and was without a doubt the unhappiest person I’d ever known in my life. I had no idea if she’d always been that way or if my father’s abandonment and my existence simply sucked the joy out of her.
Her criticism and stringent rules severed any relationship we might have had when I hit my teenage years. We were nothing but strangers living under the same roof. After graduation, I was more than happy to leave and never look back. I called her on holidays out of a feeling of obligation, but the conversation was strained. All I could do was search for words to fill the silence between us.
When Helen called, I knew it was my duty to go back to Woodridge and care for my mother—even though it was the last place on earth I wanted to be. I tried to console myself with the knowledge that I would be far away from Jonathan, but even that sounded like a desperate attempt to find a silver lining. The truth of the matter was that returning to Woodridge felt like a death sentence.
I’d tried to call my mother to tell her I was coming, but she didn’t answer and I didn’t leave a message. I anticipated a lukewarm welcome at best, but I was used to her cold treatment. Like every other uncomfortable aspect of my life, I pushed it aside and refused to think about it. Deep inside, I knew I needed to help her, even though she would fight me every step of the way. How had I not known she was this sick? We’d talked briefly last month on her birthday, but of course she hadn’t mentioned the fact that she had cancer. It had been barely a three-minute conversation.
I didn’t know what to say, so I just stared at her, a hundred emotions warring inside me at once. She didn’t speak either, but the angry look on her face said it all. There seemed to be no right words, so I blurted out the only thing that came to mind.
“Hi, Mom.”
“What are you doing here, Hope? Why don’t you go back to wherever it is you came from?” She slammed her car door angrily and walked in to the house, reminding me once again that the choices I made were always wrong.
