I know they say you can't go home again
I just had to come back one last time
~Miranda Lambert "The House that Built me"
She wants to go home. That's all she had been thinking about since she stood there on that green hill with the wind blowing gently and soft words were spoken in memory that filled the air.
She had a mantra and she'd been repeating it over and over; it's not real, it's not real. But when she heard the soft cries and saw the redness in their eyes, she knew it was and all she wanted was to go home.
To be anywhere but standing there, listening to words that seemed empty and hallow and smiling that smile that seemed fake and nodding her head at the words of sorrow people told her with a shake of a hand.
She recognized some and others she wondered if they really cared or were they standing there because once upon a time they brushed their lives and their loss shattered their life they way it did hers.
Her aunts are crying and to her it seems they can't stop and she finds it oddly comforting but she won't tell them that. She'll stand there beside them, her hands in theirs, staring straight ahead and wishing she was anywhere but standing there upon that grassy hill.
Her uncle stands tall. His eyes forward, a hand gently holding her aunts and every so often she steals a look his way, wondering if he'll cry but she never sees a tear fall and she wonders if he's just as a broken as she is. He told her once he admired her father and the courage he had for chasing another dream when his first dream fell apart and that he wished he was a bit more like him. She didn't understand it then, she was just seven when she sat there beside her uncle, her blonde head resting against his shoulder, watching her father accept an award she didn't quite understand what for but when the camera showed her mother sitting in the crowd, with tears in her eyes, she heard her uncle say those words and she started to believe that maybe her father really was a super hero.
She hasn't cried, she wants to but the tears won't fall and they don't fill her eyes. She just tired and that old phrase she heard once a long time ago, keeps ringing in her head and she wonders if it's true; you can't really ever go home.
Her cousin told her that once and she believed him. After all he was older and she believed he knew everything and when her parents sat her down, she was five at the time, at least she thinks she was five maybe she was six but they told her they were moving home. Back to their childhood hometown and she wondered if ten year olds really knew what they are talking about, well at least her cousin anyways.
They lived in her father's childhood home for year well her father built her mother a home, her dream home he said, right beside that very lake where they had married and just around the corner from the spot where he fixed her heart.
She had heard that story, begged them each night to read that book he had written long ago to her and they would; the three of them curled upon her bed, her nestled between them as she and her mother would lay there listening to her father read and that become her favorite time of day; laying there in bed with them, listening to her father's voice.
They moved away when she was sixteen, off to LA to chase a forgotten dream and she cried when they drove away, her eyes locked on that lone house on River Road, with the wrap around porch and the swing in the front yard. She could tell you were she pressed her small hands in the fresh paint on the front porch steps the first day they moved in, her mother right beside her laughing as her father just shook his head, mumbling how they just ruined a perfectly good paint job.
She could even tell you how she learned to play the guitar at twelve, sitting on that window seat that over looked the lake and how her mother cried when she sang her first song, her aunt beside her. She had put that guitar down, her eyes wide with worry at the sight of tears in her mother's eyes but she just simply bushed them away with a smile and whispered how her father was so going to hate the fact she liked the Cure.
And that tree, where the swing hung, the one her father hung when she was ten, buried just beside it was her favorite dog. She could point out the very spot her father dug that hole and she could tell you how she had laid there for hours, her mother's arms wrapped around her as she cried, whispering how it would be alright and she'd always remember that dog.
She remembered that dog and how he'd follow her around everywhere but it was sitting beneath the tree with her mother, her hand tenderly running through her curls, talking about life and listening to those stories of how her mother loved her father and she was full of magic and meant for greatness that she remembered most.
And she believed every word she spoke.
And Jaime whispered those words again to her beneath that tree, his arms wrapped her as she cried and she believed him. He was after all twenty-one and she was just a sixteen year old girl leaving the only home she had every known.
Now her cousin stands behind her, his hands clasped before him and she knows he's crying (she's heard his silent cries) and she knows he's shattered, broken like her and she wants to turn and ask him if he still believes you can't home because at the sound of her aunts sobs she wants nothing more than to be there now.
She wants to hide, curl in a ball and pull the covers over her head and pretend she's six again and they're all playing hide-n-seek and they'll come in, whispering like they always did and she'd hear the laughter in their voices and she'd giggle that giggle her father told her once sounded just like her mothers.
But she wasn't six anymore and they weren't playing a game and she couldn't giggle that giggle and she just wanted to go home.
Sighing, she yanks the green comforter over her head, the voices coming from the living room, becoming muffled and she closed her eyes, counted to three and pretended she could hear his voice drifting through the air, asking if anyone had seen her and she wanted to giggle that giggle and feel the bed sag with their added weight and feel her mother's tender touch as her fingers danced across her buried form before they tugged the comforter back, revealing her smiling face and she launch herself into her mother's arms, laughing as her father attack her sides, causing her to giggle wildly and cling to her mother with tears in hers eyes.
"Sawyer?" rasped a voice and she buried her face in the mattress, a muffled sigh escaping her lips as the bed sagged against Brooke's added weight.
"People are leaving, I think you should come out and say goodbye."
She shook her head, knowing Brooke couldn't see but she wanted to stay buried, locked in the memory of being six and the feel of her mother's arms holding her and the sound of father's voice ringing in her head.
"Sawyer did you hear me?" She asked again, her hand coming to rest against Sawyer's back.
"Yeah," she mumbled as she gently pulled back the comfort, her green eyes blinking against the light and meeting the dark eyes of her aunts; her mother's best friend. "Can't you?"
"Sawyer…" Brooke drawled out with a sigh.
"I can't." She said, pulling herself up into a sitting position. Her arms wrapping around her long legs; legs her father said she inherited from her mother. Another trait she clung to. "Aunt Brooke."
"It's okay." Haley said softly from the door way, her arms wrapped around waist a sigh escaping her lips as she made her way into the room and lowering herself down beside Brooke. "You don't have to."
Sawyer's lips curved upward, a gentle smile on her lips as she dropped her head onto her arms, her emerald eyes staring at the two women before her with tears in their eyes.
"But I think you should come out of your room." Haley added, rubbing her hand up and down Sawyer's leg.
"Maybe." Sawyer whispered, stilling Haley's actions with her hand and gently giving it a squeeze.
Brooke smiled as she stood, brushing the wrinkles from her dress, "It's better than a no."
"Maybes usually lead to yes," Sawyer said softly. "That's what Mom use to say."
Tossing her head back in laughter, Haley shook her head with a smile and tears in her eyes, "It always worked on your Dad. He'd say maybe to your Mom and the next thing you knew, he was doing whatever she said whether he wanted to or not."
It was true and Sawyer couldn't help but smile. There had been plenty of times she had asked her father for something only to be told no but hours later she'd find that much wanted object sitting on her bed and she'd hear her mother laughing somewhere in the house as her father grumbled over being a sucker for her mother.
Wiping the tears from her eyes, Haley leaned forward brushing a kiss to Sawyer's forehead and standing, a faint smile on her lips, "You come out when your ready kiddo."
Nodding her head, Sawyer tucked a blonde curl behind her ear, "Aunt Haley?" she called out.
"Yeah?" She said, pausing in the doorway.
"I wanna go home."