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“I’m just sayin’, love is love, kiddo, but there’s no sense in anyone payin’ full price for—”
“Can we stop talking about this?” I demanded. “Before I decide Black Friday shopping with the entire Nutter family would be a reprieve from the torture?”
Emmaline reached over and patted my hand. “There, there. Nothing embarrassing about safe sex… especially not when it involves that adorable Jackson boy. Did you know he once helped get a whole family of feral deer out of Monette Ivey’s garden before they could eat her beloved heirloom romas? She insisted the boy deserved a medal for heroism… though I think, in the end, she just made him a nice platter of bruschetta.”
My mom was having a field day with this. “Feral deer, you say? Are there others that are domesticated?”
Emmaline shot her a wink. “You know Monette has a way of embellishing a story. Wait’ll you hear the one about the rabble-rousing groundhogs trying to start a coup in her zucchini patch. ‘I tell you, they were organized, Emmaline. Someone put those groundhogs up to this!’ Next year, I expect the deer and the groundhogs will join forces, and no vegetable will be safe.”
Mom couldn’t hold back any longer. She laughed louder and harder than she had since… well, as long as I could remember.
“Only in the Thicket,” she finally said, wiping a tear from her eye. “Gosh, I miss it sometimes.”
“Well, that’s easy enough to fix,” Amos said. “Move on back.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” she admitted.
I stared at her in shock. “You have? But… you couldn’t wait to move away and start over. You used to make fun of the Thicket all the time.”
Mom’s smile faded. “Well, sure, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love it, honey. It’s because I love it that I make fun of it.”
I thought I understood what she meant. Hearing about all the Black Friday sales was amusing as hell, but where a couple of days before I would have been laughing at those things and the ridiculous town that spawned them, now I felt like I was in on the joke. Like my family’s teasing, it was laughter born of affection and camaraderie… because in my heart, I belonged to the Thicket again.
But still.
“If you loved it, why’d you leave in the first place?” I demanded.
Amos and Emmaline exchanged a look. Amos lifted the paper in front of his face and pretended to be absorbed in the condom ad while Emmaline stood to clear the empty dishes and coffee cups.
My mom turned to me. “Back then, I needed things I couldn’t find in the Thicket. A therapist, for one thing. A circle of other divorced moms who understood some of the challenges I faced, for another. But more than that, I think you and I both needed a fresh start. A chance to figure out who we were away from your dad’s hometown… and his reputation. Your uncle Amos had helped us out so much for so long that I… I wanted to prove we could stand on our own two feet.”
Amos reached over and grabbed her hand. His voice wobbled with emotion. “And you’ve done that a hundred times over. I’m so proud of y’all. But thank God you stayed in touch, Katie-Bird. We never stopped loving you as one of our own.”
She squeezed his fingers tightly and turned her attention back to me. “I don’t regret making that decision, Charlton. Not at all. But… just because a choice is right at one point of your life doesn’t mean it’s right forever. Just because you needed to leave doesn’t mean you can’t come home.”
The thick lump in my throat made my voice sound hoarse. “Until this week, I didn’t realize it’d still feel like home.”
One corner of her mouth tipped up in a smile. “Maybe if you’d listened to me the past few years when I tried to convince you to visit, you’d have figured it out sooner.”
My instinct was to argue, but then I remembered all the times she’d suggested I visit the Thicket for Christmas. “I thought you were suggesting it out of family obligation, not because you thought I’d actually like it enough to willingly stick around.” I winced and shot Amos a guilty look. “No offense, Uncle Amos. Obviously, I love spending time with you—”
Amos snorted. “Can it, kiddo. You ain’t so special. Plenty of folks get a wild hair to leave the Thicket. Why, when I was seventeen, I was so eager to leave I took myself down to the Army recruiter and signed up, just so I could get the hell away from your great-grandfather, controlling bastard that he was. Never made it past the testing, though, on account of my stammer was too severe.”
Mom and I exchanged a confused look. “I’ve never known you to have a stammer, Amos,” she said.
