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CANDACE
They said you can’t go home again.
Well, Thomas Wolfe said it.
Which was kind of funny because the early-twentieth-century novelist was born about twenty miles up the road from Kirby Falls.
But I completely understood the sentiment.
Perhaps better phrasing would be...you can’t go home again and expect everything to be the same. Or maybe, you can’t go home again and expect everyone to welcome you with open arms. And then there was the lesser known proverb: You can’t go home again because you’ll fuck everything up, and why couldn’t you just stay in New York, Candace?
But the fact remained. I did go home again.
I flew into Asheville the second week of August when the humidity was thick enough to slather on my momma’s award-winning buttermilk biscuits. I watched as hazy blue mountains grew bigger and sharper in my rounded airplane window until they parted on either side for the lone runway that would drop me within fifteen miles of my hometown.
Kirby Falls had been in my rearview for just over seven years.
I’d lit out of town on graduation day, my maroon cap and gown balled up in the backseat of my best friend’s 1996 Toyota Camry, and hadn’t looked back. We’d had a plan—Lo and I—and a little bit of money, and we’d decided to leave our hometown behind while we could.
I’d never had to explain it to Lo. She’d always just gotten it. The overwhelming desire to break free, to do something completely different than the rest of your family. Lo knew what it was like to have an itch beneath your skin and a fire in your belly driving you to grow up faster and prove yourself. She knew because she felt it too.
We’d bonded over being the youngest children among overachieving siblings. My brother, Brady, had three years on me, but his personality beat mine by miles. He was warm and funny and everyone’s favorite Judd. And that wasn’t just my warped perception. You could ask anyone in our hometown.
Then, there was my big sister, Joan, who was nine years my senior and basically my parents’ dream child. She was responsible and dedicated and had known from a young age that she wanted to help run our family’s apple orchard.
Lo had three older sisters, and they’d each been valedictorian on their respective graduation days. My friend figured, why bother? She’d never loved school the way her sisters had, and her solid C average throughout her high school career reflected that.
Community college the next town over had been Lo’s destination at the end of that magical post-graduation summer, but before that, we’d been determined to spend three whole months getting as far away from Kirby Falls and our responsibilities as possible.
I wondered what Lauren “Lo” Walker, my former best friend, would say when she heard I was back in town. Swallowing around the sudden golf ball that had formed in my throat, I lowered the shade on my window as the plane taxied briefly before depositing me—and the forty-eight other passengers—at our gate.
I watched as everyone hurried to grab their bags from the overhead compartments while a whole lot of nothing happened. The flight attendants hadn’t even opened the cabin doors yet. Rolling my eyes at my overeager fellow passengers, I pulled out my cell phone and turned off airplane mode. My finger hovered over the text thread with my brother before tapping.
Brady: Text me when you land.
Me: Will do. Thanks for volunteering to pick me up.
Brady: Oh, I didn’t volunteer. Mom’s paying me.
Me: Shut up.
Brady: You shut up.
Brady: Have a safe flight. Can’t wait to see your stupid face.
I rolled my eyes again—this time at my doofus brother as I reread our exchange from before I’d boarded at LaGuardia.
Now, I peeked toward the front of the plane to see the progress of the line. Still not moving.
I typed,Just landed. I’ll let you know when I’m at baggage claim.
Staring at the screen, I waited a few moments but no dots appeared to indicate my brother was typing. I slid the phone back into my pocket and started gathering my laptop bag and purse from beneath the seat in front of me.
The flight had been a short one, just a couple of hours. Long enough to get in the air, request my standard in-flight ginger ale, and then land between the rolling hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
We deplaned directly outside into the humid August heat and onto a gray ramp that zigzagged a few times before setting us on solid ground.
