Going back home wasn't something I'd ever imagined I would have to do. Ever. I'd gotten out of that shithole of a town and never went back. Not even for my parents' funerals, or lack of. I didn't even know where their cremains were. I didn't want to see either of them ever again, not my pedophile father or my mother who allowed him to do it and stayed with him.
When my husband died, I assumed everything would fall to me, but it didn't. No, it went to his other wife and their two kids. He'd married her first and therefore mine and his marriage wasn't legal, not to mention he'd been using a fake name. I got nothing, not even our little house. The woman was so mad and acting like I was some homewrecking hussy and not a victim who'd been duped. I'd believed him when he said he was a pilot and because of Covid he had to work overtime because of the labor shortage and fewer people willing to work in planes. It made sense and I hadn't thought twice about it. When the pandemic was over and things went back to normal, he'd be home more often.
It had all been so reasonable.
Right up until his car accident on his way back to our house from the airport. It wasn't until I was trying to get things sorted and the funeral arranged that I found out he wasn't who he said he was at all and that his real wife lived in Florida with their kids.
It was my fault he cheated on her and my fault he died. If he hadn't been coming to see me...
She was a real winner, that one.
Going back to my hometown was a last resort for me, VERY last resort.
MRS VanDenBrind was apparently a big deal and was on Real Housewives of Palm Beach. She'd been a debutant and married Rich when they were young. Richard was his real name, but she called him Rich. I met him as Dave.
The first thing I saw coming over the hill and into the town, the first thing ANYONE saw, was the broken down eyesore of the old power plant. The second thing was the abandoned prison that was supposedly haunted. Right after the prison was the abandoned sheet metal factory and passed the power plant was the abandoned dog food factory. Once you circled around those, you saw the old shacks that the miners and miners family lived in for years until the mine closed. When the mine closed, everything closed. The only people left in town were people who'd lived here their whole life and owned houses or lots, and city people coming out to try their hand at a hobby farm or bed and breakfast. They lost interest real quick when they actually saw the town.
The town itself was cut in half by the railroad tracks. There was the bad side of town with the shitty trailers and oddly parked and covered old vans that were obviously meth labs south of the tracks. North of the tracks was the nicer side of town with a Caseys, a Dollar General and a long row of long abandoned businesses. At the very end, next to the tracks as if catering to both sides, was the bar. It was called 'Wet Your Whistle', a sort of play on the train whistle always coming through. 1/2 price shots when a train went by. Everyone in town called it Gene's, though, even though Gene had sold it back when I was still in elementary school.
There were actual houses on the north side of the tracks, but they were all in horrible shape. Hardly livable, most of them, and all but 1/4 of them long abandoned and left to nature to take back over.
No one moved here, people only moved away. The town had died and there was nothing here at all anymore but the people who had nowhere else to go.
I had grown up south of the tracks in a little two bedroom trailer, but it wasn't there I was headed. I'd gotten my Grams place when she'd passed years ago. I'd told them to sell it, but there was never a single offer and the only realty office in town had moved away.
I was hoping I could come, fix it up a little and post it online and sell it sight unseen. I would find some creative words for the town like 'quaint' and 'off the beaten path' and 'a great place for a fresh start with room to grow and ready for a new business'. Things that would lure in the people who wanted things like that.
I sighed glumly when I pulled into the old house. The yard was overgrown and there were creepers and vines growing into the house through the broken windows.
This was going to be spectacular.
I didn't need a key to get in, the screen door was hanging open and on one hinge. The front door had been broken open with a crowbar and was standing wide open.
Inside was worse than I was hoping. It smelled awful and the stained and torn carpet squished when I stepped on it. There were no appliances in the kitchen and all the cupboards were standing open. It was a square house, very basic with four rooms. A small kitchen, a small living room, a small bedroom with a tiny closet and a tiny bathroom. Every single window was smashed, most of them outward and not inward, but there was absolutely nothing in the house at all. Not even a toilet or sink. The small walk in shower looked and smelled like people had been pissing in it.
This was an unholy mess. It was also going to suck.
May as well get started. Grumpily, I went out to my car as I looked up the closest hotel/motel. Super, 67 miles. Rolling my eyes, I drove down to Gene's and pulled in next to a truck with a bed that belonged to a different truck and a hood that belonged to another, all frankensteined together.
Inside was busier than I imagined and I blinked as I looked around at all of the faces in the small bar. Going to the bar, I sat on a stool near the end and the bartender came over.
I recognized her from school, but pretended I didn't. "Hi, what sort of wine do you have?"
"Red or white."
"Oh... do you know what kind or if..."
"Nope. One box is red, the other is white. We don't get a lot of wine drinkers in here."
"Umm. White is fine, thank you," I told her with a nervous smile.
She came back a moment later and set a glass down. One sniff and I grimaced. "Ma'am, I think your wine has gone sour?"
"Wine don't sour, it gets better with age!" she shot back, acting like I was trying to cheat her.
"No, that's only if it's unopened. How long has this been open? It smells like vinegar."
She snatched it up and smelled it, then scrunched her nose up. "That does smell like shit. You want something else?"
"Bloody Mary, hold the hot sauce."
"I can do that."
She went down the bar and I sagged in my seat. I would have to stop on the way to the hotel and grab some wine. And dinner too I guess, I hadn't eaten all day. I was so freaking tired of driving! Ugh, the thought of another hour behind the wheel made me want to cry.
"Six?"
I turned and looked at the man who'd used my old nickname.
Holy shit.
"Uhh... Hey Corin?" I half stuttered, looking up at the tall, skinny man.
Corin had been an absolute freak in highschool, like, literally out of his mind. He grabbed random people and licked their faces, hocked loogie's down girls shirts, cut himself and flung his blood at people, peed in a teachers wastebasket every single time he was told no on going to the bathroom during class. He was always in trouble, always suspended and the day he brought a gun and a kill list to school he was put in jail.
I'd been terrified of him, even if I hadn't been on his kill list. I was too young for him to have noticed me, just a freshman when he was a senior. Everyone knew Corin though, he was talked about even after I graduated.
"Never thought I'd see you again," he offered, looking me over and shoving his hands in his pockets.
"Ditto," I tried to smile. "It's temporary."
