You Can Go Home Again

Chapter 1

With a slight hesitation, I knock on my own front door. The door swings open before I can finish knocking. Our dog CharlesBarkley, Charlie for short, barks his hello and nearly knocks me over.

"Oh, Laney! You're here!" My older sister, Hope, greets me with an enthusiasm that seems out of place, but then that has always been Hope.

"Laney, why are you really leaving," Hope pressures me as we load the back of Pawpaw's car with my bags. "You love school. Even if you didn't know what you were going to do, you would still finish and just get another degree after that." You can always count on a big sister to see through your excuses.

"Hope, you wouldn't understand. You just started this awesome job where you're already excitedly talking about a five-year plan to move up the ladder," I pause as we shut the trunk. "There are no ladders for me. There is no path. It's like I have these two options: wander around the desert hoping to find my own oasis or take the leap off the cliff in hopes that there is something I just haven't yet seen."

"Life choices don't have to be as dramatic as that, Laney," Hope nudges me. She isn't entirely wrong, but it's my own fault that my choices are that dramatic.

"Let's get one last drink," I smile at her as I begin to walk back in the house. She quickly loops her arm in mine, and rests her head on my shoulder.

"Yes, let's. Afterall, Lord only knows when we will get the chance again."

She embraces me with a hug that reflects the lost time between us. "Mom was afraid you wouldn't come, but I knew you would." She lets go so she can look me in the eye. I cannot hold her gaze though and look down after only a moment. I notice she is in a maroon and gold maxi dress with netted long sleeves. Seeing her dressed this way, I know I am way under-dressed. Although, standing next to Hope, I always felt underdressed. I have nicer clothes in one of my bags. I could change, but why stall the inevitable.

"Let's go inside Hope." I adjust the backpack on my shoulders and grab my other two bags off the ground so we can move through the door. Charlie leads the way back into the house. Hope lets me pass through and shuts the door behind me. Our house reflects the upper-middle class, familial household I grew up in with the high standards set for the children. This is clearly shown in the photographs of us receiving our various awards and winning competitions. I make my way through the foyer wanting to make it to my room to set my stuff down before I run into anyone else. The living room is thankfully empty, other than Charlie who has made himself comfortable in one of the recliners. I veer off to the right down the hall to my old bedroom. I don't know what I expected when I opened the door; maybe that they would have either left everything exactly as I had or that they had gone with the more cliché completely creating a new room out of my old one. Neither happened though, it was like they could not decide.

"I hope y'all don't turn my room into a gym," I joke with Dad as I look around my room. Charlie sits on the foot of my bed, as he has done ever since we adopted him. It doesn't look like I've done almost any packing. I guess that's what happens when you don't have plans and limited luggage. Honestly, I don't know whether it would actually bother me if they changed my room.

"Well, we'll see how often you decide to come visit your very loving parents, and then we'll talk," he winks at me as he sits on the edge of my bed next to Charlie. I sigh and take a seat too, wishing I could tell him everything. "Laney, I don't want you to think your mom and I are disappointed in you. It's just different times; when we were your age, quitting school was something incomprehensible."

"Yes, well it was also 'understood' that women would stay home to raise children. Even if they had jobs, once they got pregnant, it was 'understood' that they would leave their jobs to be house mothers. A life like that is incomprehensible to me." Especially after everything that just happened.