Chapter Text
It was funny, Lucy mused, how no matter how far you strayed from home, you always seemed to remember the way back. She proved that theory, as she drove down the familiar road that led to Barnsville, a quiet suburban town six hours from LA. If only the journey was under better circumstances.
She’d gotten the call at 3am to tell her that Jean was gone. The old woman had been the closest thing Lucy had had to a grandmother. Jean lived across the road from the Chen family home and had always invited Lucy round for a cup of tea, offering her dinner when her parents were too busy working to remember to feed her. She was sweet, with a wicked sense of humor that only her closest friends and family knew about. And that was something, in a town as small as theirs when there weren’t many secrets.
Over the five years Lucy had been gone, they’d sent postcards to each other, Jean a variation of the few available at the post office, Lucy the most colorful ones she could find wherever she happened to be at the time. Jean didn’t like technology and the time difference often made it hard to phone anyway, but there wasn’t much you could fit on a postcard. Maybe that’s why Jean had failed to mention the fact she was dying, but Lucy suspected it was more due to the fact Jean knew she would come home in a heartbeat had she known, so she hadn’t told her.
Instead, following the horrible phone call from her mom, Lucy had immediately booked the next flight out of Brussels. Her job in the bar wouldn’t give her the time off, so she’d quit on the spot. And so, here she was, homeless, jobless and, as her mother would no doubt remind her, boyfriend less, returning home at 25 to sleep in her childhood bedroom and bury one of the closest people she’d had in her life the next morning. It was quite frankly a nightmare.
Not to mention the fact that he’d be there.
Tim. They’d dated when she was 17 and he was 19, a whirlwind of a year with late night drives and all the things young couples do when they think they are forever. And then he’d left for the army when he turned 20, driven to leave to get away from his dad and broken his grandmother’s heart in the process. Not that she showed it. But Lucy couldn’t be angry at him for that, she’d broken Jean’s heart too when she’d left Barnsville to travel and study abroad two years later.
Lucy blinked away tears as she turned at the cut-off for their small town.
She had seen pictures of him on his sister’s Facebook and knew he’d aged well at least. He was a cop now, working for the small precinct in the town center. Lucy thought he must be good at it, he always had a strong sense of right and wrong, of protecting people. Probably born from the hell his dad put him through.
There’s people much worse off, he would tell her, kids who were starved or locked up, but he was kicked any time his dad had a drink, which was any day ending in y, and the psychological turmoil that came with it was perhaps even worse. Mr. Bradford never showed that side of himself in front of Lucy, and it made her sick knowing how he could switch, and how Tim fought to hide that from her. But she’d seen the bruises.
Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, no matter how he had broken her heart that fateful night he’d told her it was over, Lucy’s heart ached for him now. Tim had been incredibly close to his Grandma Jean, had stayed at her house as many nights as he could. That was, until his dad would show up and demand his son came home, throwing threats at his mother-in-law until she relented. Jean had tried to persuade her daughter countless times to get a divorce, but she never did. So, Jean had saved her grandson, helped Tim to fill out the forms for the army and watched him leave, taking the one route out that his father wouldn’t stand against.
Lucy blinked as she took in where she was: Barnsville stretched out in front of her. Driving on autopilot, she hadn’t acknowledged how close she was to her destination, and now that it was almost here, she realized she wasn’t ready to face it yet.
She turned on her hazards and pulled onto the side of the road.
Her parents being psychologists, and her own degree in the subject, meant that she had breathing techniques long since memorized and she practiced them now, taking slow breaths, counting them in her head, feeling her racing heartbeat begin to calm.
Five years since she’d left to travel, and this was the first time she’d been home without a flight booked to take her to the other side of the world a week later. It was the first time she had no escape route, no plan, nothing. It didn’t feel like she was returning with her head down low; she was proud of how hard she had worked to fund her travels. And she’d been all over - Asia, Europe, Australia. But the prospect of not having Jean to support her, of having to face her mother, or having to speak to Tim for the first time since he broke up with her and left to fight a war, made her want to turn the car back around and flee.
But she’d done that long enough, Jean would have told her. It was time to come home.
Lucy’s mom was as much of a nightmare as Lucy expected her to be. If not worse.
In the five minutes she had been in the house she had been berated for not calling for a month, for not having a real job, and for not visiting for her dad's birthday. There had been not a single mention of Jean.
“Are you even going to the service tomorrow?” Lucy interrupted her mom’s next rant before she could get to the boyfriend part.
“I’m working, so is your father, some of us can’t just up and leave at the drop of a hat. We have clients relying on us.”
Lucy nodded. Typical. She’d heard that phrase countless times before. “Well, I’ve got jet lag, think I need to clear my head a bit. I’m going for a walk and then taking a nap. I’ll see you for dinner.”
She turned and left.
Faced with a town she knew like the back of her hand and yet felt like a stranger in, Lucy went where she always did anytime she’d had a fight with her parents: to Jean’s.
She stopped outside, hiding herself behind the tall tree in case any of the family were inside. Thankfully, all the lights were off, but the curtains were open so that she could see in. The clock above the mantle hadn’t changed, nor the statues adorning it. The walls were the same color and the sofas the same. Lucy half expected Jean’s smiling face to appear at the window. But it wasn’t going to, and for the countless time in the 27 hours she’d known Jean was gone, Lucy felt herself begin to cry again.
She wiped the tears furiously and forced herself to walk on. If she didn’t want to embarrass herself at the service tomorrow, she’d have to pull herself together.
Round the corner, past the shop, through the lane, and Lucy was at Barnsville High.
Some of her best and worst memories happened within those walls. The time Samuel had pushed her over in the playground, graduating top of her class, Tim asking her out to prom despite the age difference, their first kiss behind the bike shed, their last ever kiss at the end of the road.
He’d taken her on a walk to explain his choice, why he had to leave and why he wouldn’t put her through the long distance thing, didn’t want her waiting on him when she should be living her life.
He’d kissed her goodbye under the streetlamp at the bend and then offered to walk her home. She’d refused, but she knew he’d followed anyway, making sure she’d get home safe. Always the gentleman, Tim was. Always the gentleman, which made it so much harder to hate him for that night.
Whatever tomorrow brought, alongside the pain and dread, Lucy found that there was a small part of her that was actually looking forward to seeing him again, even if it was just to say hello.