I weave through narrow downtown streets lined with college apartments and parallel-parked sedans to find the Bradley house. It’s not quite what I’m used to back in New Haven, but it’ll do the job. It’s the kind of building I’d miss if I blinked: antiquated, brownstone, three floors, surrounded by overgrown trees, with a screened front porch. Ma’s favourite talking point about the house is that it was apparently built during Prohibition, and the basement used to be a hole-in-the-wall speakeasy. My sister’s favourite talking point about the house is that the speakeasy must have had terrible business, because said basement smells like shit. But what can I say? It has that small-downtown charm.

I park the truck in the gravelly driveway and clamber out, unloading various bags as I go.

‘That’s all you got?’

I peek up from my mass of luggage with a chuckle. ‘Hey, Pop.’

My dad, arms akimbo in the Southern stance of keen observation, cracks a smile. ‘Has to be less than half of what Sav had.’

‘How does one person own all that stuff?’ I huff as I lug a particularly large bag to the side, and my dad saunters down the drive to help me out. ‘Makes me glad I missed move-in.’

‘She wasn’t so glad.’ Pop raises an eyebrow. ‘Don’t know that any of us were. We wouldn’t have let it fly if you weren’t, what’d you call it …’

‘On the road,’ I finish for my dad as he rolls his eyes with a smile and brings me in for a huge hug. He’s where I get my height. Ma is so short that she once baked a cake for the state fair whose top she couldn’t even reach.

‘On the road,’ echoes Pop. His eyes cut towards the lacrosse sticks poking out of one of my duffels, and then to the long pieces of kinesiology tape still gripping my knee, just visible below my football shorts. I think for a moment he’s going to ask about that, the injury, the last time we saw each other, but instead, he takes a totally different route. ‘House looks just about how you remember?’

‘Oh … well, couldn’t tell you.’ I chuckle half-heartedly. I’d love to say it’s exactly how I remembered, but the memories are like strands of thread I struggle to weave together. ‘What, last time I was here was junior year, right?’

‘Junior year of high school.’ Pop smacks his lips, gazing up at the roof of the house. And here it comes. ‘Everyone else came back, Ceej, I just struggled to understand what kept you up there. Oklahoma’s perfectly nice, isn’t it?’