His old Ford pickup creaked to a stop along the unlit city road like it used to so many times in the past. He hadn’t thought before about what it would be like. The feeling of desolation that would accompany his homecoming.
He looked out the window at the simple church door. It would be nice to be seen by Him, to ask to feel worthy of His Gaze, of His Love. But deep within, he knew that he was far from worthy. Why had he even driven all those miles to his hometown? It’s not like anything would change. His family would still feel the same, she would still feel the same, and he would have nothing here, as he had nothing there.
He could clearly remember the day he left that little chapel he now sat parked at, begging God to show him what to do. He felt homeless then and felt homeless now. The roadside preacher he met on his journey home reminded him of the uncomfortable reality – the world is not your home.
Home and theoretically, happiness was beyond the world. Beyond that little chapel where he had felt glimpses of serenity. His forehead dropped to the steering wheel and he sighed. Maybe it was worth it to drive past his parent’s house. He hadn’t spoken to them in roughly two years and maybe they’d give him the love he yearned for.
He shifted the truck into drive and turned down the side street that would lead him home. A chill passed through him when his father’s words rang through his head again. He had been the last one to leave home. His father called him selfish and ultimately, worthless for deciding to leave home for obviously nothing. His girlfriend had broken up with him about a week before and he made the decision to leave somewhat rashly in his father’s eyes. But it wasn’t rash to him. They had been planning to leave this town since they started dating. Then she had started college and started working and all of it was to “work towards the dream”.
Her roots to the place grew while his had continued to recede and she believed she was holding him back. They didn’t have the same dream anymore. But maybe he would realize how special this little town was and that he could settle down here, they could settle down here. Yet all he ever felt was that he needed to leave. He tried to make it home as long as he was there but he always felt like he was on the outside, like a child looking into the model Victorian village his grandmother always had set up on a sideboard. All the town knew each other and welcomed each other but he was never part of the fold. He had to leave to find his own.
So he had left and now he had returned. If there was nothing at home for him, and nothing out in the greater wide world for him, where was there anything for him? The only thing he really had left to his name was his truck. His girlfriend was gone, married now to some other guy. He hadn’t spoken to his parents in months. He had no home. No friends. Nothing.
He slowed as he reached the end of the street, the familiar curve of the cul-de-sac opening before him like an old wound. The house was still there, the siding had faded, and the mailbox had been recently set aright. His father prepared every autumn for the challenge with the plowman who seemed to always target his father’s mailbox and no one else’s.
The porch light was off, though he had once sworn it never went dark. For a moment, he let himself believe they might welcome him home, despite the coldness of the exterior.
He parked across the street and watched the still house. It was late so it was likely they had gone to bed maybe an hour or two before. Could he wake them? Would they ignore it as they so often do when someone knocks? Or would they feel a pull to get up and see who stood on the doorframe and welcome him?
Conflicted but still knowing he had nothing left to lose, he stepped out of the truck. The night air was colder than he remembered, the kind of cold that makes the world feel hollow. He walked up the front steps that he rebuilt shortly before leaving those few years ago. His hand brushed the cool metal door and formed the fist to knock. He knocked once, then again, softer. Nothing.
He shoved his hands into his pockets and shuddered before turning and going down the stairs. His feet stopped at the curb and he turned again towards the house. Walking towards the little garage behind the house, he peeked into the window. Their car was gone.
The door to the garage hadn’t changed, just more weather beaten than the last time he was there. He shimmied the door open and found the spare housekey hidden in the cinder block near the door. Left there in case he or his siblings got locked out or forgot their keys.
His thumb rubbed over the newly minted key. Walking towards the back door, he saw the new locks and felt more like a stranger. The spare key that he kept, stashed deep in his duffel, wouldn’t even work on his parent’s locks anymore. He didn’t belong here.
Still he stuck the new key in the new lock, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. He proceeded up the stairs into the kitchen, feeling like an intruder. The kitchen was clean, perfectly staged as if it were a showroom. His mother always had to make the house, especially the kitchen, look spotless and almost unlived in before she left.
A note on the counter was scrawled out for someone who was not him. “Thanks for checking on things and grabbing the mail! We’ll be back on the 20th. Call if you need anything.”
The words hit him harder than any silence or changed locks could have. He traced his mother’s handwriting with his eyes, as if touching them might change what they said. He could almost hear her voice saying it – gentle, practical, unaware of the distance between “if you need anything” and everything he actually needed.
He stood there for a long time, taking in the empty kitchen. It had changed. He had changed. Feeling disgusted with himself, he retreated out of the house. Hands shaking, he relocked the door and returned the key to its hiding place. He leaned back against the siding of the garage and let out a shuddered breath. Staring out into the darkness until the motion light blinked off again. Somewhere down the block, a dog barked, then stopped. The street slept. The world went on.
He walked back to the truck, got in, and sat there with his hands on the wheel. He thought again of returning to the chapel and perhaps going in this time. Despite the darkness, the sanctuary candle would still be burning – still, patient, waiting. The thought of it felt strange, almost dishonest.
He turned the key and the engine stuttered awake. The truck groaned, just as it always did, and he turned off his childhood street. The backroads kept him going. He was unsure if he was leaving or returning anymore. The old roads guided him.Muscle memory carried him past the park, past the hill that was always prime for sledding in the winter, and past that one house that he and his friends had decided would be a perfect homestead for setting up a fortress if the apocalypse ever hit.
Before he knew it, he had turned down her road. Her house looked smaller than he had remembered, but warmer somehow. Last time he was here, she had just bought it and told him that she was staying and that he should too.
The porch light glowed amber against the siding, and there hung a wreath of ferns on the door. A child’s stroller was tucked up against the porch, out of the elements. He could picture her there, laughing softly at something her husband said, her hair wisping in her face as she bent to pick up the child from the stroller. He could remember how pretty she looked under the porch light, as tears streamed down her face, as she watched him leave. He remembered hoping she’d change her mind and leave with him but she didn’t. He had tried calling her a year ago and that was when he learned about her new love and new life…without him.
Separated now by the years and different lives, for a moment, he imagined stopping. Waiting until morning perhaps, just to see her, to tell her he was back. But what would he even say? That he’d made it out, only to find nothing waiting for him? That he still carried the version of her who believed in him, when she herself had long since let him go?
He watched the sleeping house a while longer. A light turned on in one of the rooms and he felt something in his chest tighten and release all at once. She wasn’t his to miss anymore. Maybe she never had been.
He drove on, the road passing under his headlights, the warmth of her house fading in the mirror until it became just another point of light swallowed by the night.
He drove without really seeing the road, the hum of the tires steady and low like a lullaby for the weary. The world around him was just shades of grey and the faint outline of trees, reaching up like hands in the dark. Every few miles, he’d pass a home with a porch light and watch it vanish in the rearview, each one marking the same emptiness he carried within him.
He wondered, not for the first time, what would happen if he just stopped driving. If he simply turned off the headlights and let the dark take him. If he simply let go of the wheel and kept his foot on the accelerator. The thought didn’t come as a shock, only as a quiet suggestion, as it had so many times before. There was no one who would miss him. He was written out of the lives of everyone he once knew.
He knew he did not want to die; he just didn’t want to be this anymore. The hollow ache, the wandering, the constant feeling that every door had been locked long ago. But as his hands began to loosen on the steering wheel, another thought formed, softer and slower. He remembered the roadside preacher again. The world is not your home.
Perhaps the preacher had meant that life itself wasn’t supposed to fit, wasn’t supposed to feel easy. Maybe this ache was the proof that he still belonged somewhere, just not here. And if he took that last turn, if he ended the waiting himself, he wouldn’t be escaping the emptiness but sealing it forever.
He pulled the truck to the shoulder and let the engine idle. The heater rattled, the ABS light flickered. He beat his fist against the dash. The road stretched on, unending and blank. He sat there, looking out into the unlit darkness that the road led into, his breathing slow, his hands trembling faintly on the wheel. He didn’t know where he’d go or what he’d do when it came.
He shifted the truck back into drive. The tires rolled forward, steady and the ABS light disappeared. His heart still ached.
Molly Hugo is a proud Michigander with a wide array of skills and passions, ranging from writing to outdoor skills. Two books that have had great influences on her are Tolkien’s “leaf by Niggle” and Hillenbrand’s “Unbroken.”