The Return

Chapter Two

It was close to 3:00 A.M., and Holly Steinfeld sat in darkness.

And relative silence.

Her face scrunched and shoulders tensed.

Strapped to the back of a Ford Explorer, she peered out the rolled-down window. She was being petty knowing the car's air conditioner was on full blast. Pettiness came naturally to her.

Dr. Williams always made her refrain from self-deprecating comments and two years into their sessions, she was yet to put his advice into practice.

Dark clouds gathered over the cold night.

She wasn't claustrophobic, nor was she motion sick. Which meant whatever she felt in the back seat of Vaughn's SUV listening to her mother's soft bitter sobs and incoherent Igbo slurs was regret.

Her shoulders slumped.

She hadn't planned her outburst; she didn't intend to refer to Georgia as a failure who was undoing everything, she spent three and a half years setting in stone. She didn't mean to call her father an emotionally abusive deadbeat who wasn't deserving of their love and affection... it all just happened.

"I think we could all use a pit stop, we've been on the road for a while anyway," Through the rear-view mirror Vaughn cracked a slight smile. His eyes met hers. "You mind?" He rose a thick eyebrow. He refused to age. Refused to look anything older than thirty-eight even though he was well into his forties. Rat bastard looked better than Georgia. She drew the shorter straw. In the custody trial, she was saddled with what the judges called 'the troubled kid'. The one most prone to act out. The one that would lessen her mother's life expectancy by a year or two since she never gave the woman a break.

Holly slouched back in her seat.

She didn't care whether he stopped or kept moving till they ran out of gas.

She continued to glare out the window at the few cars scattered along the road. The wind howled, the sound, guttural, her hair flapping hysterically.

She couldn't say she was startled to see people on the highway that early in the morning. In the one year she spent in Abuja, the nightlife was as fervent as the daytime.

Her eyes fluttered shut.

She still remembered him, the boy from the airport. The one who once he looked up at her couldn't take his eyes off her. Sitting there at the end of the row. Shamelessly, he watched her like a Netflix documentary up until Vaughn joined them at G3.

Curly hair, dark brown eyes, and a chiseled jawline. Ordinarily, the nameless boy was her type. She always had a weakness for tall, dark, and handsome.

It didn't matter. Her snappy attitude towards the sperm donor she called a father hurled whatever future chance she had with him out the window.

Being civil towards her father wasn't an option. Not when he bolted through the terminal in day-old cargo pants and a loose-fitting baseball shirt wearing a Crest commercial smile while his eyes were a dead giveaway. He overslept.

Forgot the ex-wife and daughter he had to pick up from the airport.

Her eyes snapped open.

He didn't stop at the gas station. No, he took another right and merged onto Mannheim Road and even passed by a Burger King. Her stomach grumbled and her mouth watered. She barely touched the airplane food.

"You didn't need to do that," Heaven's words were white noise almost indistinguishable from the whipping wind or Georgia's sniffles.

Holly jerked her head in her twin's direction. They weren't identical. They came close. Heaven was on the leaner side, which meant by old societies' standards, she was prettier. Oh, how Holly heard it growing up. The whispers, the snickers in the cafeteria... Things changed and the rolls she once hid beneath oversized clothes were all the rage. The pooched stomach, the thick thighs. She was no longer the fat sister. In the judgmental eyes of the public, she was thick. Her skin tone was an added bonus. Holly who was two shades darker than Heaven's tanned skin had large obscene pores and high cheekbones. She was natural. Beautiful. She wasn't completely covered in tattoos, she had enough to stand out from Heaven. With a minimalistic sleeve on both her arms, her torso wasn't spared from the needle. Each one was unique and heavy with meaning.

Without as much as a word, Holly turned back to the window in time for Vaughn to Turn left onto West Adams Street.

She drummed her fingers on her lap. And thus, their white-picket purgatory began. They already had the two-story with the trimmed lawn, the nosey neighbors undoubtedly glaring through their Ring video doorbells and parted bedroom curtains. They were the third home after the intersection by Saint John's Baptist church.

Home sweet home. Holly thought sardonically.

They were back. Day one of concocting the perfect family from the rubble they left behind.

She pressed her lips together trying not to look too annoyed.

There was one thing Holly loathed about Chicago, especially after she spent the better half of three years trying to erase herself from the city's memory.

It didn't forget.

People didn't care how much time she spent cutting herself out of family pictures, or how many times she denied getting baptized at the community church down the block courtesy of Georgia's native beliefs. The moment the sun peaked its head out and she could no longer cower beneath the shadows of the night, she would be remembered as the daughter of a failed home, a broken family.

"Here we are," Georgia's voice trailed off. "I missed this place, I'm not going to lie," She said. There was a moment of silence that hung over their heads like an imminent doom. "And you finally got to the lawn I've been telling you about," She playfully nudged Vaughn in the ribcage. He chuckled to himself and nodded.

The passenger door clicked open.

The soft trickles of the Sawyer's sprinklers next door brought the night to life. A dog barked and Vaughn killed the engine basking them in reaching darkness.

Holly wondered if the Sawyers still lived there. She doubted they moved. She was gone for three years. She knew that family. For the better half of sixteen years, they barely touched up the murky brown paint on their walls. They weren't the get-up and move across the country type. Then again, neither was she.

Their neighborhood on West Adams Street saw all kinds of residents. There were the kids with dark skin and curly hair, kids like her and there were kids like the Sawyers with pale skin that better fit into the niche reputation of their community.

As if setting everything that unfolded at the airport on the back burner, Georgia climbed out of the passenger seat, bag pack in hand.

She led the way to the front porch with Vaughn and Heaven in tow. There was a brief moment of suffocating silence alone in the back seat of a car that smelled nothing like her childhood.

Whatever she did from that moment couldn't be undone.

What could go wrong?