Chapter 1

Mia

Car windows down, music blaring, the subtle scent of redwood trees filling the car, its tinge of sweetness undercut with earthy tones, spice and dry wood. Freedom and the smell of home. Two of the best things a person can feel. It’s just too bad that I’m faking feeling both.

I’m driving too fast down this forest-lined, narrow, blacktop country road, trying to catch those feelings for real. Or just trying to get this visit over with as fast as possible. Or trying to escape the inescapable.

The wind is messing up my loose brown hair. I’ll have a hell of a time getting the tangles out tonight, but in this moment I want nothing more than to feel the fresh, fragrant, cool air. Mom will help. She’s a master hair stylist and my hair’s in need of a cut anyway. Her expert hands working on my hair will feel good.

It’s been too long since I’ve just existed in the moment. I’ve lost the ability to just be so long ago, I don’t even remember ever having it most of the time. But these scents of home along the empty country roads surrounding my hometown always bring it back at least a little. At least they bring back the memory of the carefree, love and life loving girl and young woman I used to be.

Hoping to get to this state of Zen, I turned off the new highway that everyone now uses to get where I’m going. It’s good to remember those better times. Good to sing along to old hits from my youth blaring on the radio, even if the only place they still play them is the oldies station. Good to leave the world behind and just enjoy the fresh air and the beauty of this world, stretched out on either side of this narrow, pristine because of disuse, two-lane country road, taking the form of tall redwoods and pines and other majestic trees I won’t even try to name. I don’t know their names. I just know they’re beautiful.

In my youth, almost twenty years ago, I’d make this drive often. Alone or with Axle. It was a glorious and exciting time, full of hope and possibility and love. Now I hope I don’t run into him on this visit.

When I first moved away, I came home every weekend. But later, after I broke it off with Axle and started law school, these trips became few and far between, dwindling to nothing in the last few years.

I’ve been trying to convince my mom to move to San Francisco with me for years. But she’s always refused until now, claiming her small beauty salon in the small town of Pleasantville-my hometown-is too much part of the community there, too much her home to ever leave.

That’s changed now that she’s being evicted from the place where her salon has stood since I can remember. She’s sixty years old and according to her, too old and too tired to start fresh somewhere else. Which she would have to, because the rents in the once quiet, out of the way town of Pleasantville are suddenly sky high. I disagree that it’s too late for her to start over, but she refuses to let me pay the difference. It’ll be great to have my mom nearer, but I’m afraid she won’t be the happy, bubbly woman she’s always been. Not after she’s forced to close the business she’s worked her whole life to build. And leave the town she’s always lived in.

As soon as thoughts of that creep into my mind I turn the radio volume higher and start singing along louder.

Nothing is decided. Nothing is set in stone. I’m taking this week off work, even though I’m at the start of the biggest case of my career as a public prosecutor, so we can try and find a solution. And that’s all I’m going to focus on.

The town of Pleasantville is just over the next hill, less than twenty miles away.

Homecoming is supposed to be bittersweet, isn’t it?

I’m afraid it’ll be nothing but bitter after this visit.

And I don’t want to make it so before it even starts.

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