Page 64 of Broken Cedar

“To me? Always.” I hear water running. She must be doing dishes. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Work stuff. You know.” I shrug, even though she can’t see me.

“I know when you’re lying, Hallie. I changed your diapers. There’s no statute of limitations on that particular superpower.”

I set my cereal bowl on the coffee table. The marshmallows are beginning to go soggy. “I think I made a mistake coming back here,” I say, trying to force the words to come out casual, and relieved that they do.

Mom doesn’t say oh honey. Doesn’t do any of the things people in romantic movies do when the protagonist has a breakthrough. What she says is: “Took you long enough to realize that.”

I blink at the wall. “You’re…not surprised.”

“Hallie. Sweetheart. The only person surprised by this revelation is you.”

The cereal is definitely soggy now. I push the bowl further away with my foot.

“I built a whole life here,” I say weakly. “A career. Friends. An apartment with a security deposit I’ll never get back.”

“You built a life,” Mom agrees. Her voice is steady. The kind of steadiness of a woman who has watched her daughter run in circles for eight years and has been waiting, patiently, for the circles to stop. “And now you’ve discovered it’s not the life you want. That’s not failure. That’s information. Life experience.”

“But what am I supposed to do about my job? My apartment? All of it?”

“You’re supposed to do exactly what you’re doing right now. Figure out what you want. The job will figure itself out. The apartment will figure itself out. Those are just things, Hallie. They’re not you.”

I look around the apartment. The dead plants. The framed print above the TV that I’ve never really liked but hung anyway because apartments need art.

“Coming home isn’t failure,” Mom says, her voice softening. “It’s just coming home.”

I close my eyes. Something in my chest loosens—a knot I’ve been carrying so long I forgot it wasn’t supposed to be there.

“I miss you,” I say.

“I know, honey,” Mom says. “I miss you too.”

We talk for another ten minutes about nothing important. About everything important. The weather. She updates me on that cooking show she’s been watching. Whether I remembered to water my plants (I did not tell her they were dead). By the time we hang up, my cereal is a science experiment and my cheeks are wet, and none of that matters because for the first time in eight years, I know exactly what I want, and the wanting doesn’t scare me. It feels like coming up for air.

I stand and walk to the dresser, opening the top drawer. Colt’s shirt is there, folded neatly, the fabric soft under my fingers. I lift it to my face and breathe. His scent is almost gone. A ghost of something that was real a fortnight ago and is real in a different way now.

I set the shirt on the bed. Then I open my laptop. I spend ten minutes searching for a flight. There’s one leaving in about two hours. It costs more than it should, but I don’t care. I type in my credit card number, hit purchase, and the confirmation email lands in my inbox thirty seconds later.

Just like that, I’m going back. Not for a visit. Not because Mom needs help around the ranch. Not because Colt asked me to. Because I finally asked myself the right question.

I close the laptop, but don’t pack straight away. Instead I wander through the apartment.

The living room first. The couch I found on Craigslist three years ago from a single mother who couldn’t stop smiling because she was finally buying brand-new furniture.

The bookshelf I assembled by myself after discovering the instructions had apparently been translated through four different languages before reaching English. The framed degree hanging crookedly in the hallway because I never got around to fixing it.

For years these things felt like proof. Proof that I’d made it. Proof that leaving had been worth it, that I’d become someone. I stop beside the window. The skyline stretches away in every direction.

The dead plants are still sitting on the windowsill. One brittle leaf snaps off beneath my fingertips. I smile. Not because it’s funny. Because somehow it makes perfect sense.

For days I’ve been telling myself I killed them by forgetting to water them. Standing here now…I think maybe that’s only part of the truth. Some things aren’t meant to live in pots forever.

I look around one last time. This apartment gave me exactly what I needed. A place to become someone who could finally come home.

I whisper, “Thank you.” Not because anyone is listening. Because I am.

I pack light. Just a week’s worth of clothes. Jeans. T-shirts. Just the essentials, knowing I can come back for the rest later, or not come back at all, depending on how the week goes.