Page 26 of Mostly My Girlfriend
5
Eight yearsago
Iowa
Julia
“Weird, isn’t it? Coming home after having been away for so long?”
We sat in Ethan’s car—a Tesla, not because he believed in saving the environment, but because he believed in checking out what he considered his competition—in front of the home where I’d grown up.
The weather was arctic. The fields were an endless mass of frozen cornstalks. The lights inside were on.
Christmas in Iowa. This was the first time I’d been back since I left. Mom and John had come out East to attend my graduation this past May, but I’d gone right to New York afterward. Until Ethan came to get me a few months ago.
“No,” I answered him, making myself believe it. This was home. This was Mom and the guys, and I would always have it. Especially now that I was making enough money to keep the bank from foreclosing.
I opened the door of the car, which was one of those weird, futuristic, lift-up doors—a little showy, I thought—and stepped out.
I’d dressed the part, like I used to: a pair of jeans, a flannel shirt, some sturdy boots. The difference now was that the jeans cost over a hundred dollars instead of twenty, the shirt cost eighty dollars instead of fifteen and I would never, upon threat of death, confess what the boots cost.
Together, from either side of the car, we pulled out bags of presents and our suitcases then started toward the old home. Two stories, worn white with black shutters that needed painting.
That would be nice. Pay off the mortgage, own the place free and clear, then have a little money to freshen it up. Not that any folks other than our closest neighbors ever came around, but fixing it up would mean something to us.
Make Dad proud, I thought.
Stepping onto the front porch, I didn’t bother to knock. It was my home. But I still looked behind me to see that Ethan was there. He wiggled his bushy eyebrows at me as if to suggest he wasn’t going anywhere, and I rushed forward.
“Merry Christmas!” I called out.
“Oh my gosh, she’s here! She’s here!”
My mom, a short, plump, sixty-year-old who was an Iowan woman through and through, came out from the kitchen with a huge smile.
“Oh my gosh, look at you!” she screeched.
I didn’t bother to remind her she’d seen me seven months ago at my graduation and I hadn’t changed all that much. But then she’d been crying so hard with tears of joy, it might have been difficult for her to get a good look at me.
“You’re too thin!” was her first observation.
It wasn’t true. While, yes, I was thinner—a condition of living in New York and realizing pretty quickly that if you’re were going to dress the part of an up-and-comer, you had to lose the extra belly—I wasn’ttoothin.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, dropping the bags and wrapping her up in a large hug.
“I missed you,” she whispered into my ear.
“I know.” I squeezed her tight and wished, with all my heart, that it was just me she’d missed. My deadpan humor, my quiet sulks, my need to always have a book with me. Instead of the relief that, with me here at the farm, all her burdens were lifted.
“Sis!”
I looked up to see John with a smile on his red face. Swell. He was already drunk. Then Robbie and Devon pushed past him and smothered me together.
“Sorry we missed graduation,” Robbie said.
“Someone had to stay and run the farm.” May was the hay harvest season. “Let me look at you,” I said, pulling away.
They were taller, fuller. Men. Robbie was twenty-eight and Devon would be twenty-seven this year. I’d always felt so much older, despite being their younger sister, but now I could see life was starting to catch up with them, too.
