Chapter 1: The Return

As he wound down the street in his rental sedan, Thomas peered out the window at the small, familiar world that began to form around him. He rolled into town at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday, which meant that Brooke Haven was little more than a concrete desert. A stagnant black sky and endless strip of pavement lay before him, lined on either side by rows of near-identical houses and red maple trees. It had been eleven years since he’d been home.

A serene view of a suburban street at night, with cozy houses illuminated by warm porch lights and a gentle glow from street lamps under a twilight sky.

Brooke Haven was a far cry from New York, but that was the point, according to his therapist. On his way to his sister’s house — his former childhood home, which she had bought from their parents with the assistance of her husband, then renovated — Thomas passed most of his old haunts…the empty high school football field, where he’d sit on the bleachers with his friends and talk about movies at odd hours of the night, the library he’d worked at for years after school, the underfunded local theater that remained in constant need of repair.

Thomas rounded the corner on Lyceum Street and pulled up to a towering abomination of a home, freshly sided and completely at odds with the architectural integrity of all the other houses on the street, which consisted mostly of understated Tudors. He sighed. It looked just like the photos his sister had plastered across her Instagram account, a series of “afters” alongside images of their childhood home in its formerly unaltered state.

Despite its vacant outward appearance, the house was alive. Thomas could feel it when his sister opened the door and sprung toward him with a jolting embrace. She immediately began talking at him, motioning for Thomas to follow her from his car, across the front yard, and into the winding entryway of her home. He walked through Stephanie’s dimly-lit foyer as she prattled on about the demolition and the updates, the surround-sound and the vaulted ceiling. His former home now lurched above him and wound around him, exhaling sharp bouts of cool air through slitted vents on the hardwood floors and freshly-painted walls. He followed close behind Stephanie as she waved him back toward the kitchen, pacing around the house with a controlled degree of mania.

Through the foyer and past an untouched living room came a stainless steel kitchen, a hyper modern and industrial-looking monstrosity. There wasn’t a speck of dust to be found, and even if there had been, Thomas wasn’t sure there would have been anywhere it could have existed for very long – the room, like Stephanie’s new house, was all sharp corners and fine edges. Stephanie grabbed a banana from a bowl on the gargantuan, marble-topped island and stuffed it in her duffel bag, which was resting on the floor. Beside the island sat a hairless alien whose gummy smile grew wide as she bobbed up and down in her stationary buggy — Stephanie’s newborn and Thomas’s niece, Sidney. Thomas placed his backpack on the island beside its only remaining contents – an oblong grey ceramic bowl with a single, freshly abandoned banana within it. Stephanie shuffled around Thomas, scooping up her baby in her right arm, and swiftly removed his backpack from the island, placing it on the cool floor. “Sorry,” she said, her back to Thomas as she fumbled in the fridge for a bottle of formula. “No outside items on the island.”

“Got it,” Thomas said. He picked up his backpack from the floor and swung it over his shoulder.

“So, the trash goes out on Tuesday,” Stephanie began, placing the formula bottle on the recently vacated island. “Eddy!” She screamed in a non sequitur-fashion, still in ceaseless motion throughout the kitchen. She opened a pantry door and threw a few supple pouches of apple sludge into her open duffle. Then she turned to Thomas, suddenly very serious in tone: “You’ll be ok here, right?”

“Yeah,” Thomas said instinctively, rather than earnestly. Stephanie seemed to read Thomas’s lack of commitment, and she arched an eyebrow. “Yes. I promise,” he confirmed, rolling his eyes.

“Mom said this would be a good idea for you. But if you don’t think it’s a good idea–”

“Steph, it’s a good idea. I swear.”

“Eddy!” She hollered toward the north side of the house, her eyes still locked on Thomas’s. It was an unsettling trick she’d been employing since childhood.

“Coming, coming!” Thomas could hear Stephanie’s husband yell from his office down the hall.

“The Uber will be here in two minutes, Eddy!” She warned him, loudly as ever. Then she turned her attention back to Thomas: “Listen, Thomas — this should be an easy gig, alright? There really isn’t much to do. Feed the cat. Take out the trash on Tuesday. Watch Bravo.”

“I’ve got it down,” Thomas said, exhaling in the face of his sister’s tiring intensity. She still looked concerned, and Thomas wasn’t sure if it had to do with the wellbeing of her cat, Thomas’s emotional stability, or perhaps, the worrisome intersection of both. Thomas let out another sigh and placed his arm on the shoulder of hers that didn’t have a newborn latched to it: “Promise.” he said, and she nodded solemnly.

Finally, Eddy rolled into the kitchen, his eyes bleary from hours at his laptop. “Hey, Thomas,” he said, pulling him into a hug. “You look good, buddy.” Eddy was three years younger than Thomas, but his high-paying, life-consuming finance career bestowed upon him a proclivity for referring to any fellow male outside of his corporate corner of the world as “buddy,” “pal,” or “big guy.”

“We’re going to miss the Uber if we don’t leave now,” Stephanie said as she passed off her baby to her husband, its hands outstretched towards Eddy on the way. Sidney beamed up at Thomas from her father’s arms. Stephanie zipped up her duffle while Eddy rolled his carry-on towards the door with his free hand, Sidney in the other. They shuffled out of the house with one last “Call us if you need anything!” from Stephanie, and with the slamming of the door, Thomas was alone.