Chapter Text
I shield my eyes from the harsh sunlight as I step out of the door of the plane and descend the stairs onto the tarmac. I’d forgotten how harsh the sun can feel on my skin here in Texas. It’s been well over two years since I was last here. If I’d had a real choice in the matter, it would have been even longer before I returned.
I shift the strap of my carry-on bag and move it over to the other shoulder as I follow the pathway into the airport building, sighing with relief when the cool air conditioned temperature greets me as I walk through the sliding doors. It’s definitely going to take some time to re-acclimatize to the heat. It never felt as hot as this in Salem.
I see the sign directing passengers to baggage claim and take my phone out of my pocket and let the screen light up. 3 notifications show on the display, all from my dad.
9:12am
Fly safe, I’ll see you at baggage claim when you land.
11:57am
Was thinking we could go out for dinner tonight if you’re up for it. That Mexican restaurant you love is still going strong.
And the most recent one, sent only 5 minutes ago.
1:30pm
Got a park and making my way to baggage claim. Can’t wait to see ya.
I lock my phone again and put it in the pocket of my bag while I keep walking towards baggage claim. I can feel my stomach start to tie itself in knots the closer I get. This arrangement was not my first, second, or even fifth choice in how to move forward with my life since I left my fiancé three weeks ago; but every other plan I’d tried to make had fallen through. Moving back in with my dad was my last and only option.
The relationship between my father and I was complicated. He and my mom had divorced when I was only 4 years old and Mom moved her and I across the country to New York less than a year after the divorce was finalized. She’d met a new man who lived in Brooklyn and uprooted our lives to go live with him. My Dad didn’t fight her on custody. I’d fly back to Austin during summer and every other Christmas and Thanksgiving. Mom’s new relationship didn’t last long and we moved into our own apartment near Central Park one week before my 6th birthday.
By the time I hit my teens, I wanted to spend my summer vacation with my friends and stopped going to my dad’s except for every second Christmas and Thanksgiving. He was disappointed the first year I told him I didn’t want to come visit him for the summer, but he didn’t try to persuade me otherwise.
My mom was diagnosed with a brain tumor during the summer before my senior year of high school. It was already large and aggressive, and she passed away two weeks before I was due to return to school for my final year. In those two weeks my mom’s sister, my Aunt Carmen, helped me arrange her funeral and helped me pack and sell our apartment - the money from the sale going into a trust fund I could access on my 21st birthday as my inheritance. I moved back to Austin with my dad to finish out my schooling before going on to college.
That year was one of the hardest years I’ve ever endured. My Dad tried his best to step in as the primary parent, but he hadn’t had that role in well over a decade. We argued, a lot. Living with my mom in New York, I had a lot more free rein than my dad was willing to give me in Austin. I was so used to navigating the subway and cabs on my own, used to being alone for days at a time when Mom had to go out of town with work. I didn’t have a set curfew with my mom - I would tell her where I was going and who I was with and when I was expecting to be home. She’d negotiate sometimes if she thought I was planning on being out too late on a school night and instruct me to come home earlier, and I always complied. She understood that I was independent and capable of taking care of myself and she respected me for it. She knew when she needed to step in as a mom and guide me with boundaries and always explained her reasoning if she was asking me to do something different to what I was planning.
My dad had different expectations. He set a 9pm curfew for every school night and 10pm on weekends and he didn’t leave room for negotiation. It had caused a lot of arguments, especially when I’d landed a job at a local restaurant, but the shifts ended at 11pm. I’d accepted the job thinking that my dad would make an exception for work shifts, but he’d refused to budge. I’d had to go in the next day and withdraw my application, feeling humiliated that the decision had been made for me.
I knew he was trying his best. I knew he was trying to make up for lost time. I knew he wasn’t used to having these parental responsibilities and raising an almost adult. But his lack of willingness to learn and adjust his parenting styles created even more of a rift between us.
I’d applied for a multitude of college’s, all of them far away from Texas, and accepted an offer from NYU. I was excited to go back to the city that raised me and be enveloped in its familiarity. I knew it hurt my dad to see me leave again, but I also knew it was what was best for me. Instead of flying, he hired a truck, and we drove across the country to New York, and he helped me get set up in my dorm. I promised to return for the holidays, but those visits became far and few between.
I met Harry in my second year. He was studying to become an architect, and I was working towards becoming a psychologist. We met on a night out with mutual friends and hit it off instantly. He was handsome and charming, and he brought me back to his hometown in Massachusetts to visit his family for Thanksgiving a few months after we first met and started to date. We spent Christmas that year with my dad, but we spent most holidays from then on with his family in Massachusetts. They very quickly felt like my own family. His younger sister, Bri, quickly became my best friend and I was so excited when she too started NYU when I was in my third year.
We got engaged six months after finishing college. Harry had accepted a job in Salem - at a company owned by a friend of his family - it paid well and had fantastic benefits. I moved to Salem with him and got a job as a school counsellor shortly afterwards. Everything seemed perfect. We’d used some of my inheritance money for a down payment on a house and started planning our wedding. I didn’t want anything big and fancy, but Harry’s family had convinced us to let them help us pay for a bigger wedding so that they could invite extended family to come celebrate our union.
Three weeks ago, one week before we were due to get married, I came home early from work. It was the final week of school before summer break, and I was halfway through a counselling session with an eighth grader when my vision had started to blur - a telltale sign I was about to be hit with the pain of a debilitating migraine.
I walked through the front door of our home as the pain started to sink in and walked towards our bedroom with the intention of getting into my pj’s and crawling under the blanket to block out the light and hopefully fall asleep fast to fight off the migraine. If I hadn’t been so distracted by the pain that was building behind my eyes, I might have noticed the stranger’s shoes by the doorway. Migraines also make me nauseous, and I was preparing to make a beeline for the en suite as I opened the door to our bedroom, too distracted to wonder why it was closed at this time of day when no one was meant to be home.
To say that I was unprepared for what I’d find as I opened our bedroom door would be a gross understatement. I stopped dead in my tracks with one foot inside the bedroom as I registered that there were people in our bed. A woman straddled Harry as he lay on his back and was mid moan as I opened the door. They both scrambled away from each other as they heard the door open and the woman, who I recognized as one of Harry’s colleagues, rushed to cover herself with the bed sheet.
There was only a short beat of silence before I ran to the bathroom to throw up.
As I emptied the contents of my stomach into the toilet bowl, Harry and the woman dressed themselves and I exited the bathroom right as the woman was about to walk out of our bedroom and no doubt try to leave the house as quickly as she could.
“What the fuck?!” I screamed at Harry and the woman, wincing as my head throbbed from my migraine and the strain of my voice.
“I’m sorry, I should lea-” the woman started to try and excuse herself, but I shot her a look that said don’t you dare.
“What the fuck?” I repeated, looking between the two of them.
Neither of them looked at me. The woman kept darting her eyes towards Harry, but he kept them pinned on the floor as he stood next to our bed.
“I didn’t think you’d be home so-” Harry began to explain.
“So you thought it was ok to fuck another woman in MY bed?”
“No! I mean, yes I... but...”
“Get the fuck out. Both of you, get the fuck out.”
The woman didn’t need to be told twice and rushed out of the room with a half-mumbled apology, but Harry didn’t move.
“Please, let me explain.”
“No. There’s nothing to explain. You fucked another woman in my bed. Get the fuck out. I have a migraine, and I can’t deal with you... with this... get the fuck out.”
Harry collected his phone and keys from his bedside table and moved towards the door.
“I’ll stay with my parents tonight.”
“I don’t fucking care if you sleep on a fucking park bench, Harry. Get the fuck out.”
He left, and I set myself up in the spare bedroom to try and sleep to relieve my migraine, the pain still debilitating. There was no way I was sleeping in our bed that he had brought another woman into. It was always hard to fall asleep with the pain of a migraine, but this was so much harder as I grappled with the scene that had played out in front of me. My brain eventually succumbed to sleep, likely too exhausted to remain conscious any longer and I slept through the night with nightmares replaying Harry’s betrayal playing on a loop all night long.
I called out of work the following day and started to pack my belongings. Harry and I were over. I was heartbroken but refused to allow myself to forgive him and move forward with our wedding.
His family was devastated. They were horrified at what he had done, and his own mom convinced him not to fight me on the house considering I’d used my inheritance money to pay for the down payment. I refused to speak with Harry. I didn’t want to hear his reasoning and excuses. His family helped to move his belongings out of the house, with Bri helping to sell our shared furniture. I didn’t want to take anything we shared with me. I told Bri that Harry could have the money from the sale of our shared belongings as a settlement of sorts financially.
I originally planned to rent myself an apartment in Salem and continue working at the school. I didn’t want to uproot my whole life just because he’d destroyed the life we had been making together. But it soon became apparent that I didn’t have a life in Salem without Harry. All of my friends were people I’d met through Harry. While most of them were horrified to hear about what he had done, none of them were going to abandon their friendship with him. Not that I’d even dream of asking them to choose sides, but I couldn’t continue to maintain these friendships for my own peace of mind. Harry was dead to me.
I’d had to call my dad to tell him the wedding was off, humiliated once again. He immediately offered for me to come stay with him, but I’d declined. I hated Austin. I hated the heat. I’d hated living there during my senior year. But the more I tried to find a path to move forward on, the more it made sense for me to return to Austin and move in with my dad until the house sold and I could figure out my next steps.
I caught sight of my dad as I rounded the corner in the airport and reached the baggage claim area. He was standing next to an empty luggage trolley, already prepared to help me collect my belongings. He greeted me with a hug that lingered longer than I wanted it to but didn’t pull back until he did.
“It’s good to see you, kiddo” dad said as he pulled away from the embrace.
“Yeah, you too.”
“How was the flight?”
“It was fine,” I said as I shrugged. “Quicker than I remember it being when I was a kid.”
Dad chuckled and offered to take my carry-on bag while I waited for my suitcases to appear on the conveyer belt.
I lifted each suitcase and placed them on the trolley one by one. Dad waved me aside when I went to push the trolley, insisting he navigate it through the crowd of people and outside to the airport parking lot to his car. We loaded my luggage into the tray of his truck, and I settled into the passenger seat.
Dad hopped into the driver’s seat, started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. It would be about 45 minutes until we arrived at his house.
“I know it’s still early, but what are your thoughts on going to that Mexican restaurant you like for dinner?” Dad asked the question without moving his eyes off the road.
“Is it ok if we get it for takeaway?”
I couldn’t think of anything worse right now than sitting in a loud, crowded restaurant.
“’Course. There’s a game on tonight we can put on the TV while we eat if you want.”
“Yeah, sounds good.”
Truthfully, I hated the idea of watching a game of football tonight as well, but figured I’d pick my battles. I could easily excuse myself after eating and not have to watch the whole game. It’s not that I hated football, I just hated almost everything at the moment.
I stared out the window while my dad started to talk about the stats of the season, offering a few mumbles of acknowledgement here and there. He didn’t try to push me to talk more, and I appreciated it.
As the trucked pulled into the driveway of his house and I took a deep breath as I opened my door. Dad helped me take my things out of the back of the truck and brought them inside.
The house was just how I remembered it from the last time I was here. It’s clean and tidy, which is impressive for a house that belongs to a single man. Pictures of me from when I was younger line the walls, along with classic western artwork of horses and the desert. There’s still a light stain on the carpet next to the couch in the loungeroom from one of my summer vacation visits when I tried to paint my toenails bright red when I was 11. I’d knocked the nail polish bottle off the side table and no matter how hard dad scrubbed, the stain never fully went away.
Harry and I had come to visit for my dad’s 50th birthday over two years ago, but we’d stayed in an Airbnb rather than at dad’s house. My childhood bed wasn’t large enough for both of us and I’d also wanted to be able to have our own space during the visit.
“Made some changes your bedroom over the last week,” dad said as he brought the last suitcase inside. “Figured might want it a bit different than you had it when you were 18.”
I followed him as he walked up the staircase and opened the door to my childhood bedroom. The purple walls had been freshly painted and were now a basic off-white color. My bed was gone and there was a queen-sized bed in its place, as well as a new set of drawers.
“You didn’t have to do all this,” I said as I looked around the room as took in the new sight.
“’S no trouble,” dad said as he placed the suitcases in his hands next to the wardrobe.
“Thank you, it looks great.”
“Don’t mention it. I’ve got all your old things in some boxes in the wardrobe. Figured you should be the one to go through it all and see what you want to keep or get rid of.”
He made his way out of the bedroom and back down the stairs to collect more of my suitcases. I took the time to have a look around the room at the new furniture before he returned.
“How’d you manage to get this set up on your own?” I called out as I heard his footsteps coming back up the stairs.
“Didn’t do it alone,” dad replied as he walked back in the room, setting the next lot of suitcases down next to the others. “Joel came and helped.”
Joel Miller lived in the house across the road from dad. He’d moved to the neighborhood with his young daughter, Sarah, before my mom had died and I’d moved back to Austin for my senior year. I’d babysat Sarah when she was around 6 years old – it was the only exception my dad had made to my curfew rules because I was only across the road. Joel was a contractor and had taken a job on a site a few hours away from home and had needed someone to look after Sarah until he got home late each night. It was an easy job, and I’d loved going over and spending time with Sarah.
Joel was a young dad, in his mid-twenties when I’d been babysitting. I didn’t know the story behind where Sarah’s mom was, only that she hadn’t been in the picture since Sarah was a toddler. He’d be in his early thirties now. I’d never told anyone, but I’d had a bit of a crush on him back them. He was tall, tanned and incredibly handsome.
I’d seen him a few times when I’d come to visit my dad during college, and again briefly during my last visit. He had still been just as handsome as I’d remembered him and I’d had to snap myself out of staring at him when dad had introduced Joel and Harry to each other when Joel had been getting Sarah into the car to take her to soccer practice. Looking back on the interaction now, Joel had almost seemed a little hostile as he and Harry exchanged a handshake. He was probably just in a rush to get Sarah to practice on time. In all the time I’d known Joel, he’d never been a big talker or seemed very social. Sarah and work were his two priorities and he didn’t make space for much more than that.
He and dad had forged a good friendship over the years, likely bonding over being girl dads and football. He’s a lot younger than my dad, but they both get along like a house on fire. They were often at each others houses sharing a beer and watching a game on TV. There were times where I’d call my dad to check in and say hi, and Sarah would snatch the phone from his hands so that she could catch me up on all the latest gossip that was going on in her world. I’d come to see her like a little sister I’d never had.
“Sarah’s looking forward to seeing you again.”
My attention snaps back into the present at the mention of Sarah’s name.
“I’m looking forward to seeing her again too,” I respond truthfully. “She’d be what, 12 now?”
“13 this weekend.”
I make a mental note to go out this week to get her a present. I’m not sure what 13 year old girls like these days but it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.
With the last of my suitcases brought up from downstairs, dad gives me some space to unpack and get settled in.
I sit down on the new bed and take in my surroundings. Even though the room looks brand new, I can’t help but feel the same sense of captivity I felt during my senior year.
I was never supposed to end up back here.