Chapter One Almost Home
Ryden
The city blurred in the rear-view mirror, all the glass towers and noise shrinking behind the roar of my '69 Ford Mustang. My backseat was crammed with a few duffel bags, clothes, headphones, and a couple of old photos I probably wouldn’t look at. That was my life, packed in canvas and tossed behind me.
I was heading back to the place where I was born. Home — if you could still call it that after twelve years away.
I was six when I left. My mum died, and my dad — well, he didn't exactly win Father of the Year. Said he couldn’t raise me the way I deserved. So, he handed me off to Mum’s younger sister, Aunty Harper, who raised me in a house full of warmth and sarcastic one-liners, alongside her kids — my cousins, Tamsen and Keaton.
Aunty Harper’s voice rang in my head now:
“He’s still your father, Ryden. You should at least try to know him before uni.”
I didn’t want to. But I hate disappointing her.
Dad had visited a few times over the years — a Thanksgiving here, a half-hearted Christmas there. He wasn’t a stranger exactly, but he was a ghost in my story. People say I look like him, except I’ve got Mum’s eyes.
As for the town, I barely remember it. What I did recall might be fragments I made up. I could still see my best friend from pre-K — a kid called JJ. We were inseparable, always running wild in the playground. Then there was this girl, younger maybe, who followed us around like a shadow. I don’t remember her name, but I remember her laugh — shrill and sticky-sweet, like the sound of summer.
And I remember the day my dad picked me up from school. That never happened, so I knew something was wrong even before he said anything. His eyes were red. Voice cracked.
“Mum’s gone.”
That’s all he said.
Aunty Harper was already at the house. I ran into her arms and never let go. She packed my things that night. I never saw JJ again. Never saw the girl with the laugh. Never came back.
Until now.
Two hours into the drive, I pulled into a beat-up gas station off the highway. I stretched, grabbed a coffee that tasted like regret, and stood there a second too long.
“You need to bond with your dad, Ryden. He’s your blood. He’s all you’ve got besides us.”
Harps again. Always with the truth that feels like a shove.
I wish I’d made Keaton come with me. He’d make the silence less awkward — or at least turn it into a joke. But he had plans, and I couldn’t blame him.
This trip felt like a bad idea stitched together by guilt and obligation.
But I owed everything to Aunty Harper, everything. So here I was halfway to a town I barely remembered, going to stay with a father I never really knew, and I wondered if a boy named JJ or a girl with a summer laugh might still live there.
And if they'd still recognise me under all this distance.
