❝We were quite a cliche, weren't we?❞ he smirked but I ignored the pang it spread in my chest.
❝We were. But this is real life. We can't hang on fantasies anymore.❞
❝Then why can't I forget you?❞
Adult life wasn't as easy as Hailey expected. Her jo...
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Song: My Own Miracle - Citizen Soldier
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Hailey
I came back home after the day catching up with Vickie. She'd stayed after graduating and was now working as a vet assistant in the next town. I barely ever get to see her, nor Taylor, Kevin or Olly anymore. Keeping up through phone isn't the easiest, but we manage. Yet seeing her in the flesh is like a splash of nostalgia that I much wanted. And needed.
Walking through the mall, down the same streets as we did in high school in an old town that hasn't changed as much as we had was like a slap of genuine realization of how much and how less everything had changed.
Vickie and spend the whole morning together and after a lunch she had somewhere else to be and I came back to the farm. Mom greeting This morning had been over the top- Like one would expect. Matt picked up from the square early morning and before his job we all got home for a nice early breakfast. A nice meal with the five of us: mom, Matt, Shane and I...
And Thea.
My foster sister.
Well, could I even call her that when I wasn't even living here anymore? When we never really had any kind of sibling bond to begin with -not even lived together?
Thea was my mother's foster kid, and she'd only signed in the system to host children about a year ago, after my dad passed away and Ted and Shane left too. I think the farm became too big just for her. So a few months ago she was trusted with the custody of a teen girl.
Thea Dempsey. A northern fifteen year-old whose mother passed away when she was six and her father couldn't take care of her anymore. Mom'd told me little about her, only that she had been in the system for a long time and through several families. They didn't think she would last here long considering her history, but here she was. Quiet and gloomy most of the time, but here she was.
And Mom gave her my old room, leaving me now to take the barn instead, that now had been adapted so it was almost like a second house attached to the farm. Way better than what Matt and I built over the years. And that was where I was staying. Shane was a little jealous, but he had his room and piles of memories in there.
This morning was great, but it made even more evident Ted wasn't here. And Dad either.
It was bittersweet, more sweet than bitter, but still there was this weight hanging in the air. Like the big elephant no one was properly addressing. The breakfast was amazing, reassuring and more than needed, then Matt left for work and Shane and I began the route to see our friends and acquaintances here.
And now I was exhausted. And back. Yay.
I went to the barn first, changing my boots for comfortable shoes and my jean jacket for a large pullover. The sun heated my skin when I stepped outside and the soft sound of the wind gushing across the land surrounding the farm. It buzzed me just in the right way. I was happy. I was content. I was home.
