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Now that she was home, she could relax a bit and get her bearings. Her stomach growled in anticipation of her mom’s cooking. Maybe she could convince her mom to make her inside-out ravioli, like she used to whenever Kylie needed cheering up as a teenager. Or even better, maybe her mom would make a giant stack of mouth-watering German apple pancakes.
Kylie grabbed a couple of smaller bags from the back seat, the rest could wait until tomorrow, and lugged them up the flagstone walkway to the front door. The door was locked. Frowning, she shifted her backpack to dig her keys back out of her purse then opened the door.
Inside the house, it was clear no one was home. Well, no one except Captain. The elderly rotund pug ambled around the corner from the living room and greeted Kylie by way of sniffing her boots and letting out a single bark of approval before going back to his spot by the fireplace. She was so in need of a comforting welcome, that the empty house was a punch to the gut. She dropped her bags on the bishop bench in the dim foyer and tugged off her high heeled boots.
Padding into the cozy kitchen, she found a note stuck on the fridge.
Welcome home, sweetie.
Dad and I are playing euchre at Jim and Marcie’s.
Dinner’s in the fridge.
Be home around 10.
XO Mom.
“Really?” she said to no one in particular. “I guess they’re too busy to see their only daughter.” It was upsetting they weren’t there to welcome her, but she was famished and that took priority. The only thing she’d eaten all day was a questionable ham sandwich from a gas station.
In the fridge, she found a plate covered in plastic wrap her mom had made up with a pork chop, mashed potatoes, and green beans. She put the plate in the microwave and poured herself a glass of water from the cooler in the corner.
She carried the steaming plate into the cozy living room and switched on the television. The couch was old in the way that made you sink right into it. The wooden coffee table and matching end tables were all topped with lace doilies, and everything was angled to have a good view of the television and the fireplace. The mantle was littered with framed family photos: Kylie and her brother Brad’s graduation photos, baby photos, and pictures taken of the whole family while on summer vacations.
Captain, smelling the impending scraps, came and nestled beside her on the couch. She covered her lap with a granny square blanket from the basket on the floor and flipped through the three channels her parents’ TV got.
Cable television had in fact come to Camden a whole decade ago, but her parents didn’t see the point. So, her choices were a sitcom on a station that wasn’t coming in clearly, a kid’s show, or a procedural crime drama. She chose the drama and tucked in to her dinner. It was the best meal she had all week. She’d spent her final week in Toronto eating a lot of instant ramen and peanut butter sandwiches.
After being fired, she realized what a mistake it had been living paycheck to paycheck. She was good at her job and wasn’t worried about losing it in the slightest, so it had been easy to get carried away with dinners and nights out with her friends, shopping with her friends, and weekend getaways with her friends.
Then, when she needed them most, she discovered they hadn’t really been friends at all.
She’d been foolish to try to keep up with those women. They all had much bigger bank accounts than she did, mostly thanks to their rich parents. She’d been living her dream, a single woman in the big city, wearing fashionable clothes and doing fashionable things, but her job at the children’s hospital wasn’t exactly lucrative work. Wonderful, inspiring, difference-making, but not lucrative.
When she finished her supper, Kylie turned off the television. Captain wasn’t thrilled about moving from his spot in the crook of her knees, but she needed to get up. She took her dishes in the sink, then hauled her bags up to her room. Captain stayed put on the couch. His little legs couldn’t carry his sausage body up the stairs anyway.
Her room was long and narrow, running the width of the house. The ceiling sloped, and a dormer housed a cozy window seat with a little bookshelf built-in underneath. To one end of the room was her single bed covered with the blue bed spread her grandmother had quilted. At the other end stood a dressing table with drawers and a large mirror. Beside the table was a closet that made her walk-in in Toronto feel like a luxury suite.
She’d been back so little since she left after high school, she never bothered changing anything up there. The bookshelf was still full of her favourite books from middle school. Mathlete medals hung over the mirror, and her walls were covered with posters of Britney Spears, Destiny’s Child, andBuffy the Vampire Slayer.
She tossed her bags onto the floor then dragged the blanket off the bed to wrap around herself. She shivered though it wasn’t cold in her room and sat down at the window. The view wasn’t much. Only the main street in front of their house and the house across the street. She curled her knees up and lay her forehead on them. Not surprisingly, her thoughts went to Derek.
It was bad enough she got caught speeding, but the embarrassment of getting a ticket from that royal jerk of all people was too much. She wanted to bury her head in the sand. And he would find out soon enough she’d moved home and why, that was if the entire town didn’t already know. There was no point in trying to keep secrets in Camden. Everybody knew everybody’s business.
Man, he looked good though. She knew he was the O.P.P. officer in the village now and had been for a few years but seeing him in uniform was something else. He seemed taller than he’d been in high school, and the years of police training had clearly been good to him. She might even still find him attractive if she didn’t already know what a jackass he was. And now she would have to see him again to pay the speeding ticket.
After she left for college, her friendships from home fizzled out. It was her own fault. She’d stopped replying to emails and hadn’t bothered adding anyone on social media. The reunion committee tried contacting her, but she ignored them too. How long would she be able to avoid them all now that she was stuck here? Hiding out in her parents’ house was an option, but it was hard to go job hunting hours away from Toronto, and she could be stuck in Camden for a while.
Drained by the thought, she made her way from the window to the bed with the blanket still wrapped around her and fell asleep.
