Comfort Zone

Homecoming

"Are you sure you want to do this for me?" I ask.

"Of course, you need company, and I had the vacation days." Justin replies, throwing his own luggage into the back of his truck, before lifting mine up too.

We are heading back to my hometown in Montana,  for my mother's funeral. I knew what I would find there, heartbreak and too damn much of it. I had never belonged there, and my family who had denied me from the beginning, always let me know that.

"You really shouldn't come with me." I say, voicing my thoughts.

"Come on, Lena I'm doing this for you."

"Okay but please, you aren't going to enjoy it there, Montana is a pretty boring case." I sigh, before climbing in the truck.

"Lena, we will be fine." He leand over and kisses my cheek. "I will do anything for you."

After a few hours of sleeping on the airplane, and a few bouts of turbulence that terrified me and reinstated the fact that I hated flying, we arrived in Montana. In other words, the middle of freaking nowhere. With nobody arriving to greet us, I rely on my sense of memory, to get us to my hometown of Alexander.

There is no welcome home parade, and there certainly wasn't any friends to greet, so we go to my childhood home first, and I am not surprised to see the unkempt yard, with weeds taller than me. Walking inside however takes me back to ever damn day of my childhood. It is dirty, with half-empty alcohol bottles littering the tables and floor. Rotting food sits everyone, and I can map out her eating habits for at least a month prior to her death. I am disgusted, not only because it looks the same way it did, years ago, but because in the back of my mind, I thought even my mother could change.

Justin walks into the house behind me, and you can see the disgust on his face, it's plain as day, just like everyone else that walked through the front door, that wasn't immune to the mess and smells like I had been.

"You grew up like this?" He asks, horror masking his normally stoic expression.

I nod slightly. "I told you my life wasn't glamorous Justin, not before I moved to Virginia."

"Well I'm not staying here, and neither should you, there has to be a hotel around here somewhere where we can stay someplace clean." He says, already picking up the bags again.

"There is a Red Roof Inn, if nothing has changed, it's a few blocks away, ask for Ruby she is the owner, tell her you know me, and hell you might get a free room." I tell him.

"Aren't you coming with me?"

"No, I have to stay here, do some cleaning." I say.

"Come on Lena, someone else can do that, you shouldn't go chasing bad memories." He retorts.

"Bad memories follow me no matter where I go, Justin. I need to do this, for the little girl I used to be, I have to clean this place up." I say, and practically push him out the door, and I wait until I hear the roar of the engine, before I start to cry, all the tears that have refused to fall until this moment. I cry for my mother, and I cry for myself. Through my tears, however, I start to clean

Almost an hour passes, and I have made little progress in the living room, but my tears are all gone.

Then there is a knock at the door.

AN: I am so incredibly sorry for the long wait for this chapter,  I had some writer's block and some distractions. Anyways, I hope you like this chapter and Lena going home, in the next chapter we will find out who is at the door, the funeral will happen, and maybe we will have a run in with out mystery killer! Mwhahaha :)