The Way Back
xx1xx
"That's the last of it," Andrea announced from the bottom of the stairs, her voice muffled by the towering stack of boxes she carried in her arms and distance.
Carol shook her head at her friend, a few curls loosing from her messy top knot and kissing the nape of her neck. She propped her hands on her slim hips when Andrea warded off her approach with eyes as pale and playful as a summer sea.
"It's like Jenga. One wrong move and…" She trailed off meaningfully, carefully picking her way around the cars scattered around the parking lot until she reached Carol's Cherokee and the U-hail trailer hitched to the back. Only when she had safely stowed the last of Carol's belongings in the back did she turn to her and offer up a smile.
Carol tried to match the sunny expression, but she didn't quite succeed. Instead, she felt the downward pull of imaginary marionette strings at the corners of her mouth, and it was all she could do not to crumple completely when Andrea drew her into a tight, sure embrace.
"Stop," Andrea muttered close to her ear. "Before you make me cry, too." She huffed out a laugh when Carol tightened her arms around her in response. "This is a good thing. It really is," she insisted. "You and those girls…you're going to be okay."
Carol sighed and let her arms fall again to her sides. "I know. It's just…"
"Just what?" Andrea gently prodded.
Just what, indeed, Carol mused, entirely unsure if she understood it herself. She was going home. To a place—a town—that she hadn't set foot in since she was nineteen years old. She should feel happy, shouldn't she? She was leaving behind an apartment they'd outgrown the very moment Lizzie and Mika had stepped through its doors. She was leaving behind the high rises and the concrete for the green fields of Georgia farm country and room to breathe. And she was leaving behind the one friend who'd kept her afloat when she thought she'd drown in the ocean of her own doubts after leaving Ed and his angry words and hurtful hands once and for all.
As if reading her mind, Andrea reminded her, "I'm only a phone call away."
"And I'm not even two hours out of the city," Carol jumped in before Andrea could say anything more. "I know all this, Andrea. I do. I just…I'm going home."
"You're going home."
Tugging her bottom lip between her teeth for but a moment, Carol implored her to understand before blurting, "What if I don't know the way back?"
"There are maps for that," Andrea quipped, her eyes dancing once more. "Don't worry so much. I called ahead. Dale's expecting you. If you take too long, he knows to send out a search party."
Carol groaned, flinging her head back and staring up at a dreary, colorless sky while she tried to wrangle her emotions under control. She blinked against the tears she felt stinging her eyes again and grasped Andrea's offered hand blindly. "I'm serious," she finally said, knuckling away the evidence of her weak moment when she had calmed. "Andrea, I…"
"I know you are," Andrea murmured softly, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. "Who says I'm not? There are probably maps for that kind of thing, too. Just ask my therapist. Better yet, ask Lizzie's."
The giggles that spilled from Carol's lips then were completely unexpected and wholly inappropriate, but they lightened her somber mood and she squeezed Andrea's hand in gratitude. "Oh, God. Lizzie's therapist. What am I going to do if she hates her new one?"
"Does she like the one she has now?"
"I don't…well, no," Carol eventually responded.
"She'll like her new therapist fine, and if she doesn't, she'll learn to like her."
"Just like that?" Carol smiled.
"Just like that," Andrea smiled back, tugging her back into another hug. "I'm going to miss you."
"You better come visit."
"You know I will," Andrea murmured into her hair. "Soon as things settle down at work. You know how Blake likes to keep me under his thumb."
"That's not the only thing he'd like to keep you under," Carol muttered with a wry twist of her lips, rolling her eyes when Andrea feigned shock at her words. "Don't even deny it."
"I used to think you were so sweet," she deadpanned. "Now I know better."
"Now you know better," Carol agreed with a tearful laugh. With Andrea's help, she shut and secured the trailer, and before she knew it, her hand was on the jeep's door handle and Andrea was peering inside the open window at the trio of sleep-rumpled little girls in the back seat.
"Last chance," she grinned as she ruffled the nearest head of hair, which happened to be Sophia's strawberry mop. "You sure nobody's got to pee?"
xxx
They made three separate bathroom stops between Atlanta and King County, and Carol was thankful for every last one of them when she finally turned onto the half-remembered little country road that would lead them to their new (old) home.
It was narrow and riddled with potholes.
So many potholes, in fact, the Cherokee might as well have been a giant yellow mouse carefully navigating its way through an endless stretch of Swiss cheese, the overstuffed U-haul the overweight cat lurching closely on its heels. The fanciful thought made Carol smile, and she almost turned around, ready to share the joke, until she remembered the only person that would fully appreciate it was fast asleep. Instead she sighed, tightening her grip around the steering wheel again until her knuckles blanched, and drove on.
Gradually, the road grew wider, the trees that hugged it a little less thick and claustrophobic. Weathered fences bordered fields just beginning to lose summer's green shine, livestock and fat bales of hay dots of tawny color here and there.
Carol startled when Lizzie's small, curious voice piped up from the back seat, the tablet previously held in her hands forgotten as she leaned as far as the safety belt cinched across her hips would allow.
Gripping the seat in front of her with pale fingers, Lizzie asked, "Are those cows, Ma'am?"
Six months in, and the little girl's formality still burrowed deep beneath Carol's skin and threatened to fester. She knew Ryan had taught and fostered the quality in both of his children as a show of polite manners, but Carol couldn't help but think Lizzie was using it as a way to continue to keep her at a distance. Making a mental note to broach her concerns with the new therapist when they met her later in the week, Carol hummed a quiet response. "Yes, Lizzie. Those are cows."
"Will there be cows at our farm, Mama?"
Carol smiled, heartened by the show of interest on her daughter's part after a (mostly) silent trip. "I'm afraid not, Sweetie. Our farm hasn't been a real farm for a very long time. But there is a big old farmhouse and a barn and a swing. And," she added, "there's plenty of room to ride your bike."
Sophia's freckled face fell. "I don't have a bike."
"I don't either," Lizzie lamented.
"I want a bike," Mika pouted, her brown eyes soft and heavy still with sleep. "Are we there yet?"
"Almost," Carol answered her, grateful for the distraction. "Look for the blue mailbox."
"With the daisies on it," Lizzie and Mika chorused.
Pleased that they remembered, Carol nodded. "With the daisies on it. It shouldn't be that much further."
xxx
It wasn't much further, barely half a mile then half of that down a little dirt path before Carol's childhood home came into view. Rain beaded on the windshield even as a long cloud of dust kicked up behind them, and the first drops had started to fall in earnest by the time Carol parked the jeep behind an old Ford truck that looked like it had seen better days.
"Mama," Sophia breathed, her hazel eyes big and round and wide with something akin to fright. "It looks like a spooky house."
"A spooky house?" Mika fretted, folding her short, stubby legs beneath her and rubbing her braid anxiously across her lips. "Do ghosts live here, Ms. Carol?"
Lizzie perked up at the mention of ghosts, moving to stand up before her lap restraint snugged tight across her skinny hips and rudely yanked her backward. She fumbled with the belt for a few seconds more before she was free. "I want to see."
Carol laughed. "There aren't any ghosts here." Just a lot of long-buried memories, she mused as she watched a tall, vaguely familiar figure move across the tree-shadowed porch and descend the steps, pulling a dark hood over its head and preventing Carol from puzzling out its identity.
"Who's that man?" Mika's chin wobbled with uncertainty as she asked the question and she pressed herself ever closer to Sophia with each step that the stranger took toward them.
"That's not Uncle Dale," Sophia whispered.
"No," Carol murmured in agreement, instinctively reaching for the door lock as the figure continued its approach. But it was, most certainly, a man, a broad shouldered and imposing one at that. "It's not. Lizzie. Sit down."
Lizzie complied without complaint, allowing Mika to thread their fingers together and pull her closer.
Inching her window down, Carol kept her other hand on her phone, just in case. "Sir. I don't know who you are," she began.
"You so sure 'bout that, Red?" the man rasped in a whiskey-soaked voice.
With a grin that was devilish and wide, he lifted two large, work-roughened hands to push back the hood, and Carol could do nothing more than gasp as the pieces of recognition rapidly started to fall into place.
"What's the matter? Old Merle look like the Big Bad Wolf to you? Just bein' neighborly."
xxx
Merle Dixon wouldn't ever be mistaken for a saint, but he wasn't the Big Bad Wolf either, not by a long shot. With the rain coming down in silver sheets, he unloaded the U-haul, carrying box after box across the puddle-strewn yard and up the creaky porch steps into the farmhouse. The bigger boxes, the few pieces of furniture she'd brought with them from Atlanta, he promised to get the next day, after church.
Carol nearly spit her mouthful of water across the room, and as one, from their cozy pile of blankets on the living room sofa, the girls looked up from their bowls of cereal. "You? Merle Dixon? In a church?"
Far from being offended at her incredulous reaction, Merle merely grinned. He helped himself to a healthy swig from the bottle of water she held out to him before explaining himself. "A lot of things have changed 'round these parts since you been gone, Red, but not that. Church is still standing, ain't it? If it didn't burn to the ground when you hitched yourself to that asshole husband of yours…" He wisely dropped the subject when Carol's eyes cut to Sophia meaningfully, and he followed her into the kitchen, where he pulled out a chair and crossed his arms over the back while she puttered around before doing the same. "Figured you'd be at church, with your little 'uns."
Picking absently at the label on her water bottle, Carol picked up the abandoned thread of conversation, her voice soft and somewhat wistful. "A lot of things have changed, Merle. And not just around here."
"The old man said you'd divorced the prick. Damn-near threw a party. Didn't mention the little stairsteps in there. Last I seen you 'round here, you were all starry-eyed and shit 'bout the oldest."
"Lizzie and Mika are mine," Carol told him, "but they're not mine."
"Ain't makin' no sense, girl," Merle grumbled before draining his water bottle and crushing it against his palm. He frowned when Carol promptly snatched it out of his hand.
"I'm their legal guardian," she explained, "not their biological mother. They lost their father to cancer six months ago. Their mother died a year before that. In a sense, I guess you could say their father willed them to me."
Merle leaned back, started drumming his fingertips against the back of his chair. "That's some heavy shit right there."
Carol's lips quirked into a smile. "Trust you to put it into perspective."
Merle grinned back at her. "I just call it like I see it. You said he willed 'em to you. That make things permanent?"
xxx
Merle's question lingered and lurked in the back of Carol's mind for the rest of the day. She thought about it when she made the girls peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for an early dinner. She thought about it when she combed Mika's thick, sweet-smelling hair into sections after her bath, weaving it into twin braids that trailed down her tiny back. She thought about it when she tucked Lizzie's blankets snug beneath her chin and dropped the softest of kisses to the tip of her nose. She thought about it when Sophia, misgivings and growing pains aside, said her prayers for the night, including Lizzie and Mika in her close circle of loved ones. Long after the rain had stopped and the moon painted everything in slashes of silver shadows, Carol thought about it. And then she thought about it some more.
Andrea's voice was sluggish with sleep when she answered the phone, her grumbling curses garbled before the connection cleared and she sounded more alert. "Carol? That you?"
"It's me," Carol sighed into the receiver. She said nothing else, simply breathed into the phone and listened to Andrea's breathing in turn. She groaned into her pillow when she realized her friend was patiently waiting her out. "I'm sorry. I know it's late, but…"
"Hey, I told you I was just a phone call away, didn't I?" Andrea reminded her. "I just expected you to keep it between business hours," she teased. After a beat, she spoke again, and her voice this time was much more serious. "You know I was kidding, right? You know you can talk to me about anything." When Carol still didn't answer her, her tone grew even more concerned. "Carol, Honey. You're scaring me. Is everything okay? Did something happen with one of the girls? Did Lizzie have one of her episodes? I think I have that new therapist's home number around here somewhere. Just hold on a sec."
"The girls are fine," Carol blurted, before Andrea could work herself up anymore, before she could disturb the poor therapist in the middle of the night. Not for one of Lizzie's states of utter panic, but one of hers. "They're getting along better than ever." And it was true. She didn't know how long it would last, but she planned to bask in the moment for as long as she could. "They're getting along better than ever, and I've been thinking…"
"That never ends well," Andrea remarked dryly.
"Hush, you," Carol smiled into the darkness.
"You know I love you, right?"
"Love you, too," Carol murmured. "Now let me talk."
"So…you've been thinking. We've established that never ends well. Go."
"We haven't…oh. Dammit, Andrea."
"Must be serious," Andrea mused solemnly over the line. "You never swear."
"I do, too."
"Hardly ever," Andrea insisted. "Carol. Honey, you have my undivided attention now. Just spit it out."
Carol took a deep breath and did just that. "I want you to help me adopt the girls."
Forgive me for posting another unfinished story. I am weak, a mere mortal.
;)
Seriously...I'm sorry for this. Apparently, my go-to method of trying to clear up my writer's block on my other stories is to start completely new ones, lol. To be fair, I was simply trying to get the creative juices flowing again by using an Autumn prompt list and giving you guys a little Fall-flavored one shot. 2600+ words later, though, and I realized I had another multi-chapter story on my hands, haha.
And it is so far from my best stuff.
I proofed it, yes. I probably missed a few things and didn't rework some of the phrases in the best possible way, but I didn't go back over it and scrap much because honestly? Just letting the words and the story flow really helped, if that makes sense (and it had the added benefit of unblocking me on certain section of one of my other stories).
So.
So. There were around 40 prompts total. I probably won't use all of them, and some will be used in the barest of senses. I'll probably stick to the format I have going now, with each chapter spanning a single day (this story is basically a single October in the characters' lives) unless there's a whole bunch of stuff happening in that day. ;) I'm thinking we're looking at a minimum of 31 chapters if all goes according to plan.
Newest chapters are usually posted on my tumblr account first, so head on over there and check it out, follow me if you want. I'm shimmershae.
Okay. Enough Shae rambling, lol.
Hopefully, you'll enjoy the story. Let me know what you think. Feedback is love, after all
Thanks so much for reading! Until next time.
