“Is-is he back here in West Bend?”
“Oh, no, honey,” Connie said. I could feel her gaze on me, knew she was trying to assess what I was thinking. I felt transparent, asking about Cade, and Connie C. was a gossip. The last thing I wanted were a bunch of questions from people in town about why I was moving back home. The last thing I wanted was for people to assume I was moving back home to see Cade.
He’s probably married with kids by now.
“Oh. I didn’t think he would stay here," I said.
Connie leaned closer, her voice dropping. “Ran off to California, the year before his mom died.”
California.
Not here.
I wasn’t sure if I was disappointed or relieved.
“Don’t say you heard it from me,” Connie said. “But as I heard, he joined some biker gang. It broke his dad’s heart.”
A biker gang. That didn’t sound like the Cade I knew.
It was years ago; the Cade you knew is long gone.
“I didn’t know,” I said. Of course, I didn’t know much about this place anymore. I hadn’t been back here since the end of my junior year in high school. That was when everything in my life had changed.
Why had I come back here?
My therapist had warned me about this. You’re jumping out of the frying pan into the fire, she had said. You think you can quit medicine and get away from the trauma from Afghanistan, yet you’re running right back to the place where your family died?
She thought it was all about running away from the trauma of Afghanistan. She didn't understand it was about more than that, because she didn't know the whole story behind why I was running. I had to come back here. It was the only place that could heal my soul. I realized how corny that sounded. But I believed that there was something about coming home, back to this place, that could fix the part of me that was broken.
There had to be.
My therapist had acted like there was something wrong with running away.
But weren't we all running away from something? What was so wrong with wanting something different? Everyone fantasized about it.
During deployment, on my down time after finishing my shift, I'd sit around with some of the other doctors, smoking cigars and bullshitting about what we’d do when we got back home, or what we’d do when we left the military. All of that medical education among us, the financial investment in our futures, and none of us, at least in our fantasies, wanted to practice medicine. Not anymore. In our fantasy lives, we wanted to be bartenders, stay-at-home moms, chefs, scuba dive instructors.
The difference between me and the other doctors was that I'd had the courage to do it - to walk away from it all. Well, that was one difference. The other difference was that they weren't murderers.
“He hasn’t been back here in years,” Connie said, picking up a bag of groceries. “Are you parked right outside?”
I nodded. My voice seemed to have left me. I followed her, my arms laden with bags.
“You should stop in and see Mr. Austin,” Connie said. “I know he’d like to see you.”
“I will.” I could feel my chest tightening, and I willed myself to take in slow breaths, trying to stave off the feeling of panic building inside me. I didn’t expect it to be this hard, coming home. I was thirty-five; my parents and sister had died eighteen years ago, over half of my time existing on this earth. All of this should be a distant memory. I was an adult now, and so much more had happened since then.
What had happened with my family wasn’t Mr. Austin’s fault.
It wasn’t Cade’s fault.
Logically, I knew that.
“Thanks, Connie C.," I said. "I appreciate the help.”
Connie reached around me, her arm squeezing my shoulder. “It’s real good to see you, honey. You're so grown up.”
I nodded. I suddenly didn’t feel so all grown up. It was funny how going home could make you feel like a kid again. I shut the trunk of my car. “I’ll see you, Connie C.”
In a town like this, I’d be seeing her, and everyone else, all the time. I might be leaving my past as a Navy doctor behind me, but in a way, moving to a small town like this wasn't so different than all the places I'd lived when I was in the Navy.