I still hate the things my parents said to my teenage self. But Vermont looks better to me than it ever did before. I’m ready to live somewhere without smog and traffic. I miss the smell of woodsmoke in the nighttime air, and the sight of the sun setting over the Green Mountains.

Maybe it’s weird to feel nostalgia for a place that wasn’t good to me. But I’m in the mood to give Vermont a second chance. I’m hoping it gives me a second chance, too. And I’m about to find out if driving eleven hundred miles was a good idea or just plain stupid.

As I approach the house, the front door is already opening. My dad stands on the other side of the screen door, TV remote in his hand, staring at me like he’s seen a ghost.

“Hi,” I say carefully.

“Roddy,” he whispers. He makes no move to open the screen door, but then, neither do I. Maybe we both need a minute to get over our mutual shock.

He looks older. It startles me to catalog all the gray in his hair and the new wrinkles around his eyes.

I’m pretty sure that I don’t look like the skinny eighteen-year-old I used to be, either. So he’s staring back at me trying to get over that, too.

“You’re back?” he asks, still befuddled.

“Well…” I let out a nervous chuckle. “I’ve been living in Nashville. And yesterday I just got in my car and drove up here without a plan. It took me two days.”

I won’t tell him why I left Nashville. He won’t want to hear about the awful way my relationship ended. Hell, he won’t want to hear about my relationship at all.

“So,” I continue. “I’m happy to be back in Vermont. But I’m kind of starting over. And I was wondering if…”

“Ralph?” my mother’s voice calls from deeper inside the small house.

I have very little time to prepare before she appears behind him. She’s drying her hands on a dish towel, her hair in a messy bun.

My heart gives a little squeeze of familiarity before I can steel myself.

“Roderick,” she whispers, her eyes popping wide. “Oh, honey. What’s happened?”

“Well, not much,” I stammer. “I just needed to get out of Nashville and start over. So I was thinking of doing that here.”

“Here?” She squeezes the dish towel, her eyes alight.

“Perhaps,” I say, trying to sound like it isn’t my only option in the whole world. But if I step over the threshold and stay with them, it has to be because I’m invited. I won’t live with their disdain. Sleeping in the car would be better.

“You want to stay here,” my father clarifies. He’s still holding that TV remote. And he still hasn’t opened the screen door.

It’s not a good sign.

“Just for a little while,” I say. “Until I find a job and a place of my own. I’m a baker.”