Coming Home(2)

Before she could talk herself out of it, Leah cut the engine and got out of the car, pulling her hands inside the sleeves of her coat as she wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the sharp December wind. She walked around to the passenger side and leaned against the car with a tiny sigh, allowing her eyes to drift over her childhood home.

Up close like this, it looked more modern than she remembered. The shutters—although the same brick color they always were—were brand new. In fact, the windows themselves were new too. The one she remembered to be in the kitchen was now a pretty bay window with a few small pots of daffodils lined up along the sill.

Leah’s eyes roved over the fence that led to the side yard. It had definitely been repainted recently, and there were newel posts on either side of it now. Even the short driveway leading into the garage had been repaved.

It was different. Someone was changing it.

She chewed on the corner of her lip, feeling like a bratty child as she tucked her chin into her scarf. What did she expect would happen? It had been fifteen years since she had lived in that house. Did she really think the owners would never make improvements? Never make it their own? She should have been happy that someone was taking good care of it.

The wind picked up again, and she closed her eyes, inhaling slowly through her nose. It still smelled the same—like bike rides and jump rope and hopscotch and barbecues.

And her mother.

That, at least, never changed.

With her eyes still closed, she could see them so clearly, all of them in the side yard: Leah and her brother coloring on the pavement with sidewalk chalk while her mother read a book in a fold-out beach lounger that took up half the yard; her mother showing Leah and her little sister how to tie a jump rope to the end of the fence so they could jump double Dutch even when it was just the two of them; the tiny garden in the corner of the paved yard that her mother used to water with the hose while Leah followed behind with a Fisher Price watering can, giving her enormous, imaginary flowers a summer drink.

“Hello.”

“Jesus Christ!” Leah gasped as she whipped her head up, bringing one hand to her heart.

The woman standing before her was tiny, dwarfed in an enormous red coat that hung to her knees. If it hadn’t been for the white hair, cropped short around a deeply wrinkled, olive-toned face, Leah might have mistaken her for a child.

She smiled at Leah’s reaction, her dark eyes nearly disappearing as her face crinkled further.

“I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Leah dropped her hand from her chest with an embarrassed laugh. “No, it’s fine. I just didn’t realize anyone else was out here.”

The woman nodded, her broad, amused smile transitioning into a more demure one. Leah smiled in return, expecting the woman to be on her way, or at the very least, to say something else. But she just stood there, staring at her with expectant eyes, as if Leah were the one who initiated contact with her.

The silence wore on, slowly but surely crossing into awkward territory, and Leah cleared her throat as she began fiddling with her scarf. The woman tilted her head, waiting, and it suddenly occurred to her that perhaps this lady wasn’t all there.

“So, um,” she said, playing with the frayed edges of her scarf, “are you out for a walk?”

“No, honey. I came out to see you.”

“Me?” she asked, pointing to herself.

The woman chuckled—a soft, sandpapery sound—before she nodded, and Leah pulled her brow together.

“I’m sorry…do I know you?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” the woman said, her face crumpling with the amused smile again.