That didn’t last long. His thoughts kept drifting back to their conversation, to the look of slightly nervous surprise on her face when she saw him, to the engagement ring on her finger.
Engagement ring. He was sure of that, now. He recalled that wedding rings usually have an extra band, and hers didn’t. Yet.
But after stewing in his thoughts for nearly half an hour on the long stretch of highway, he realized that it wasn’t the ring that bothered him the most. It was everything else. It was her made-up face, cheeks colored to perfection with a bronze blush and eyes meticulously lined with a brown streak that pulled up into a slight wing at the edges. It was the clothes she wore – a flowy, pink-flowered sundress, when he had always pictured her in the jeans and t-shirt she wore on the farm, or pajama-clad, by his side on the couch, curled up with a movie. It was her hair, darker than he remembered and intricately wrapped in a half-braided up-do.
Sarah was a stranger to him. With a pang of sadness, he realized that perhaps she always had been.
Pushing that thought from his mind, he focused his attention back on the road. He still had no idea where he was going. That is, until he saw the sign. The town was about 100 miles away, but he didn’t have anywhere to be, so he sped up, flying down the highway with new purpose.
It took him a while to find the house. Overgrown trees masked the street sign, and once he located it, the road was far longer than he remembered. Just when he was beginning to think he had the wrong street, he saw the little market on the right-hand side of the road, and he sat up straighter in his seat.
He had no idea what to expect when he reached the end of the road. Would the house be empty and abandoned, just as still and quiet as they left it, only with eight more years of dust gathered atop the furniture? Or would a new family have taken their place? Would they have made an attempt to scrub the bloodstains out of the original hardwood floors, or simply sprung for new ones? Would they know the story – his story?
He was still debating on which option to hope for – which would be less painful – when he came upon the start of the narrow driveway that led to the farm house. A dingy “FOR SALE” sign was perched on the front lawn, swinging in the light breeze. There were no cars in front of the house, so he pulled forward, traveling slowly over the gravel and coming to a stop beside the front porch steps.
The front door was secured with a realtor’s lock-box, and he wasn’t about to break any laws and risk ending up in prison for the sake of nostalgia. He tried to peek inside the windows, but they were all covered, probably to keep people from doing exactly what he was doing, without making an appointment with the realtor first.
With a sigh, he plopped down on the top step and looked out at the slightly overgrown yard. Clearly the house didn’t have enough interest to bother keeping up with lawn maintenance. He briefly wondered who was selling it. Technically, as far as he knew, the house still belonged to Rodney, passed down to him from his grandmother’s inheritance. But given that Rodney was in prison for murder, the property was probably turned over to the bank at some point.
He shook his head at himself. With the house locked up, he came all this way for nothing. Although, even if the house had been open, empty, free for him to roam about, what then? When he saw that sign for Homeworth, he had a fierce determination to make it to the house, but for what?
He looked down at his feet and the steps beneath them, running his hand along the rough, peeling paint that covered the wood. There were so many memories here. He realized those were the best months of his life, at least since the death of his mother, and he pushed back the tears that burned behind his eyelids at the thought.
Maybe that’s what he was chasing: better days, the memories he felt were slipping away. Seeing Sarah brought them all back, and when she left so quickly again, she took them all with her. After so many years of waiting for her, wondering when – and later, if – she would come back into his life, their reunion was over so quickly, like waiting for the epic reveal at the end of a murder mystery, only to have the credits start rolling seconds before the detective cracks the case. Sarah’s portion of his story was unfinished, and it left an ache in his chest – one that he had hoped the farm would relieve.
But there was no relief here, no completion. Only more unfinished stories. With that realization, he cleared the emotion stuck in his throat, pulled himself up from the steps, and forced his feet toward the car.
It was too familiar, driving away from the farm and knowing it would be the last time he would ever see it. But unlike that night eight years ago, this time, he didn’t look back.
Jacob’s head pounded as he shuffled into his dorm building’s small, shared kitchen. It wasn’t until halfway through his long drive back to campus that he realized he still hadn’t eaten anything besides a candy bar since breakfast. Reaching his food locker, his hand stopped short over the handle as he noticed the lock was missing and the door was already ajar. Thinking back to the last time he used his locker, when he grabbed a quick breakfast that morning, he couldn’t remember returning his lock to the handle. With anxious anticipation, he swung the door open wide to reveal an empty square of metal.
Closing his eyes and letting his forehead fall hard on the wall beside the lockers, he could no longer contain his frustration. He took a concentrated breath, attempting to remain calm, but the theft was the final straw in a heaping pile of disappointments that day. His breath came quicker and more heavily and he could feel himself beginning to lose control, water rapidly rising in his eyes and threatening to break through the barrier he was holding to so tightly.
“Fuck!” he exclaimed, slamming his locker door shut with heavy force. Returning his head to the wall with an aggravated groan, he continued his purposeful breathing, allowing anger to override his sadness.
“Everything alright?” a woman interjected from the stove top on the other side of the room. Her unknown presence made Jacob jump, and he huffed out another profanity as he calmed his startled heart.
“Sorry,” he muttered, surprised by the exhaustion in his voice. “I didn’t see you.” Under normal circumstances, he would be embarrassed to have spoken such crass words in the presence of a lady, but at the moment he didn’t have the energy to care.
“It’s okay,” she replied, eying him skeptically for a moment before turning back to the pot she was stirring on the stove.
Jacob sighed heavily, leaning his back against the wall and closing his eyes as he tried to think of any fast food restaurants that would be open at the late hour.
“Hey, do you want some food?” the girl interjected again, blowing the bangs of her short, pixie hair from her eyes as she grabbed two paper plates from a nearby cabinet. “Because I’m making spaghetti, and I’m notorious for over-estimating my noodle portions,” she joked with a smirk.
Glancing at the clock above the sink to confirm the time, Jacob returned her gaze with a look that questioned her sanity. “You’re making spaghetti at two in the morning?”
“Yeah,” she answered simply, turning her attention back to the food, serving the meal onto two plates and grabbing a couple forks from a drawer. “You want some?” she asked, turning to set their plates on the small, round table beside the oven.