The road back to Alder Ridge was exactly how Sophie remembered it—long, winding, and too quiet for comfort. The trees that lined the shoulders stood like aging sentinels, their limbs now barren as November pressed its weight into the earth. She gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, her fingers stiff in the chill that her car's heater couldn't quite push away.
It had been ten years since she left. Ten years since she swore she wouldn't come back. But now she was here, pulled back not by choice, but by death. Her mother's passing had closed the final chapter of her ties to this town, and yet it demanded her presence once more—for the funeral, the house, the last remnants of a life she had tried so hard to forget.
The town limit sign came into view: Welcome to Alder Ridge – Pop. 3,842. The same faded green with bullet holes that had always been there. Sophie felt a lump rise in her throat, and she swallowed it down before it could settle.
She hadn't told anyone she was coming. Not her old high school friends. Not the neighbors who used to leave casseroles on her porch when her father passed. And definitely not Jake Ellison.
Jake.
The name landed heavy in her chest. She hadn't said it out loud in years, but it lived inside her like a buried match—small, quiet, and capable of lighting her whole world on fire again.
They hadn't ended with screaming matches or betrayal. It was worse than that. It was a slow, aching goodbye. A hundred silences and the unspoken realization that sometimes love wasn't enough—not when you wanted different lives.
Sophie had left for college, determined to escape Alder Ridge and everything it represented: her mother's bitterness, the suffocating familiarity, the town that always felt a size too small. Jake had stayed, even after she asked him to come with her. He said he couldn't leave—not with his family, the garage, everything he'd built here. She didn't blame him then. She still didn't. But she'd hated him for making her walk away alone.
As she pulled up to the old house on Maple Street, her breath caught. The porch still sagged at the corner. The paint on the shutters had peeled away in flakes like dried tears. Her mother had lived here until the very end, stubborn as ever, refusing Sophie's suggestions to move closer to the city. "I don't need saving," she'd said last year on the phone. "I just need you to stop trying to fix everything."
Sophie put the car in park and rested her head on the steering wheel. The house was silent now, her mother gone, the lights off, the air inside probably stale and echoing with memories. She wasn't ready. Not for this. But she got out anyway.
The air was colder than she expected. Her boots crunched on fallen leaves as she walked up the porch steps. The key she had mailed to her years ago still worked. The door creaked as she opened it, and a wave of musty air and the faint scent of lavender hit her all at once. Her mother had always loved that smell.
The house was frozen in time. A coat still hung by the door. A tea mug sat abandoned on the kitchen counter. Sophie's breath caught in her throat as she looked around—like her mother might walk through the living room any second, irritated and unimpressed that Sophie had come unannounced.
She wandered slowly, her hand brushing over the back of the couch, the faded curtains, the photo frames that hadn't been touched in years. Her father's laugh echoed in her head when she looked at the family portrait above the fireplace—he'd died when she was sixteen, and everything had gotten quieter after that. Her mother had never been the same.
Upstairs, her childhood room was just as she left it. Posters still on the walls. Books on the shelf. A note in Jake's handwriting tucked in the corner of her mirror: Call me when you miss home. She hadn't.
That night, she slept under her old quilt, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the grief to hit her like a wave. But it didn't. It came in small droplets—images, voices, the echo of footsteps that no longer fell in the hall.
The next morning, she drove to the diner.
Marge's Diner hadn't changed, not even the smell—bacon grease, coffee, and cinnamon rolls. Sophie slid into a corner booth, half-hoping no one would recognize her. But this was Alder Ridge. Of course they would.
The waitress looked up from the counter and froze. "Well, I'll be damned. Sophie Morgan."
Sophie gave a small smile. "Hi, Linda."
"I didn't know you were back in town. Your mom—"
"I know," Sophie said quickly, not ready to talk about it. "I just got in."
Linda nodded, her face softening. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. She was a tough woman, but she loved you."
Sophie didn't know what to say to that, so she just nodded.
As Linda disappeared into the kitchen, Sophie stirred her coffee absently. She barely heard the bell over the door ring until a voice shattered her thoughts.
"Sophie?"
She froze.
She didn't need to turn to know it was him.
She turned anyway.
Jake Ellison stood just inside the diner, his hands in his jacket pockets, hair a little longer than she remembered, but still that same solemn expression that once felt like home.
"I thought I might see you," he said, voice quiet.
Sophie stared at him, her heart tightening. "Hi."
He nodded, stepping closer. "Mind if I sit?"
She hesitated, then gestured to the seat across from her.
He sat down slowly, like the air between them might break if he moved too fast.
"I heard about your mom," he said. "I'm sorry."
"Thanks."
A silence settled between them. Not angry. Not awkward. Just heavy.
Jake looked older. His eyes held more shadows. His hands were rougher, the kind of hands that still worked with machines, still fixed things. She wondered if they could've fixed them back then—if either of them had known how.
"How've you been?" she asked.
He gave a soft shrug. "Still here."
"And the garage?"
"Still running."
She nodded, wrapping her fingers around her mug for warmth.
"You look... good," he said, and the compliment sounded like a memory rather than a flirtation.
"So do you."
They sat there like strangers who used to be something sacred. Like two people who once memorized each other's laugh and had now forgotten how to speak without shaking.
"I thought about calling you," Jake said suddenly.
"When?"
"Too many times."
She looked down at her coffee, the surface still and black. "Why didn't you?"
He was quiet for a long time. Then: "Because I didn't know what I'd say. And because I wasn't sure you'd want to hear it."
She wanted to tell him she'd waited. That she'd listened for his voice in every wrong number, looked for his name in the backs of old notebooks. But she said nothing.
"I'm staying at my mom's place while I take care of the house," she said instead.
He nodded. "If you need anything... I'm around."
She met his eyes then, and for a second, the years dissolved. He was the boy who carved their initials into the tree behind the school. The boy who kissed her like he was memorizing the shape of goodbye.
"Thanks," she said. Her voice cracked just a little.
He stood up, nodded again, and walked out. The bell over the door chimed as he left, and Sophie felt the sound echo in her chest like a clock she thought had stopped ticking.
She didn't watch him go. She just sat there in the booth, staring into the cold coffee, wondering if the hardest part of coming home wasn't facing the past—but realizing it had never really left.