Evan cruised up and down the country roads, listening to the few local radio stations she could get way out in the middle of nowhere. She passed farmhouses she used to count when she rode the bus to school every day. Most looked exactly the same, but some had had massive overhauls done to them. Evan guessed that the old owners didn’t live there anymore. Before she had left town, the area was already starting to be encroached upon by the “city folk,” and the new houses being built on cheaply bought land had pushed out some of the people who had lived out here for generations. When she was a kid, Evan had prayed for more people and things to do to magically show up, but she hadn’t realized the real-world implications of her neighbors being forced out.
The new houses that were built popped up in sporadic fashion, sometimes in little communities that were far too cramped for the amount of money they charged to live there. She wondered how shitty the roads still got in the winter out here. She couldn’t imagine that all the young families and too-wealthy-for-the-country-and-too-poor-for-the-city folks would handle that very well.
The farmhouse her friend’s dad used to own had completely changed from a disjointed mess of spare construction parts and random animals scattered over the land to this polished and picturesque farm out of a magazine. She didn’t stay long enough to see who might be there. There was something about the way the houses had changed out here that had made her sad. She found a good spot to turn the car around and headed back to town to see if any of the old shops she hung out in as a teenager were still there.
The main street seemed longer to her than it ever had, despite the small number of little boutiques and cafes that had bene added and expanded from the town center. When she had walked down the newly paved road as a teen, it had seemed so small and she so much bigger than anything it could offer. Now driving, she realized the sheer number of buildings, the nooks and crannies that she hadn’t noticed before. Or maybe she had just forgotten.
She rode by the pizza place they were going to have dinner at later, apparently, and remembered coming here with her mom and stepdad, Reese joining them every other weekend when she wasn’t at her own dad’s house. Her half-sister and her had always been sort of close, but with Reese being a handful of years older than her, Evan had struggled to maintain Reese’s interest, especially once she had a job and a car and wasn’t bound to their mom’s house. Reese’s dad lived a couple of towns over, and while their mom had been a shitshow before Evan was born and had lost custody, her mom had gotten some of her life together when she had met Evan’s stepdad. They had decided to get sober together, which Evan viewed as a net positive, but the process had been a confusing one when she was a child. Evan’s own dad had skipped town right after she was born, leaving her mom in a weird position and Evan without ever knowing him.
She parked her car in front of the old hardware store that had closed down after the owner died and his son didn’t feel like coming back to run it. Evan had gone to school with the guy, and he had dreamed of getting away from this place even harder than Evan had. Last she knew, he was living in Vancouver and owned a semi-successful coffee shop or something. She hadn’t bothered to really keep up with anyone that closely. She walked up and down the few blocks, seeing herself in the reflections of stores that were all closed on Mondays. She passed the little salon she used to get her hair cut at when she could afford it. The novelty shop that had comic books and games that she didn’t understand how it stayed open. She assumed they were laundering money through it to keep it open and looking profitable.
She had a little tinge of nostalgia hit her that made her wish she could catch up with the people she used to see all the time, but she wasn’t even sure if everything would be the same. She wasn’t sure they would remember her either. The only place she didn’t dare step foot in was the little market that acted as the grocery store for people that didn’t want to routinely drive into the city for a couple little things. She had worked there all through high school, and she didn’t want to have to have the same conversations with the same people she had worked with for years. She also just assumed her ex still worked there since his family owned it and being the next owner had been his only aspiration.
Evan walked past the stores, past the library, the little park, and as the sun started to go down and a chill caught in the air, she picked herself up off the grass under her favorite oak tree in the park and headed back to the car. As she pulled out of the space, she caught a glimpse of the man she wanted to avoid at the store, the still gangly frame helping an old woman out with a bag. He glanced her way, and she hoped he didn’t recognize her, but she didn’t want to stick around to find out. She also half expected his name to pop across the screen of her cellphone despite the fact he was blocked, and she had changed her number several times since then. What surprised her more was the little tinge of sadness that swept across her when nothing came through.
It was a little past seven now, and while she knew her sister would be worried, or bare minimum frustrated with her, she was fine being a little late. The pizza place stayed open later than anything in town, so it’s not like they were going to miss out. She should have had them just meet her here, but Evan knew that Rodney would want to ride together so he could keep her captive with his questions for as long as possible. She passed the locked-up gas station, passed the little general store her friend’s grandpa had kept going long after it wasn’t the place to go anymore, and turned out to the little area of town that her relatives lived in. She wondered if Reese had called their mom and let her know that Evan was in town, something she hadn’t particularly planned on doing herself. Reese would probably make the two of them drive out to Charlottesville to visit the condo her mom had moved into after her stepdad had passed.
An ambulance whirled by fast as Evan came around the bend in the road.
She saw the flames before she saw anything else.