Takeoffs and Landings(49)

He looked at her very seriously.

“No,” he said. “That never once felt right, letting someone else carry my bags.” He peered off into the distance, past Lori. “You know, if I ever go anywhere again, I’m not going to let them.”

“Oh,” Lori said. She watched him skillfully hoist the suitcases onto a cart. Had he gotten taller on this trip, or was he just standing up straight for once? She remembered how he hadn’t even bothered to open the peanut packs the flight attendants had given him on the plane, how he’d turned down the chance to eat the rest of Mom’s lunch. What had happened to the brother she’d left home with?

She knew. She just didn’t fully understand.

Luggage in tow, they all headed out to Mom’s car and Gram’s truck. Lori and Chuck went with Gram, and the other kids went with Mom.

“Guess Mom’s had enough of us after two weeks,” Lori joked as they pulled out of the parking garage.

“Don’t think so. It kills her leaving you. You know that, don’t you?” Gram said.

Oh, yeah. That’s why she keeps leaving, Lori started to say, out of habit. Then the words registered for once.

Gram has been telling me that for years, Lori realized with a shock. But I never heard her before.

“Yeah,” Lori said quietly. “I know.”

Gram stopped in the middle of fumbling in her purse for money to pay the parking attendant. She gave Lori a startled look.

“Good,” she said softly.

Soon they were out on the interstate, Gram muttering under her breath about the city traffic.

“Now, why would anyone want to live in a place like this?” she asked.

“The people here probably say the same thing about Pickford County,” Chuck said.

Gram laughed.

“Fair enough,” she said. “I’m just as glad all of them don’t want to live there.”

Lori felt muddled. Chuck was different. She was different. Mom was different. How could everything else stay the same? Lori tried to ignore her growing sense of dread. She leaned forward in the seat, as if that would get her home to Pickford County faster.

After miles of stop-and-start traffic, they left the city and its gridlock behind. Out in the country, they zoomed past fields of corn and beans and golden winter wheat, ready for harvest.

I haven’t seen a cornfield in two weeks, Lori realized with a jolt. She drank in the sight. In the two weeks she’d been away, the corn had grown from knee high to waist high. It was like coming back to find toddlers transformed into teenagers. I missed it all, Lori thought. But it was silly to feel sad about corn.

Gram pulled off on the Pickford County exit, and soon they were traveling down achingly familiar roads. Lori stared joyously at sights she’d never thought about missing: the old corncrib rusting behind the Brownleys’ barn, the Riptons’ metal mailbox leaning toward the road, the tiger lilies growing wild in the ditch. She had missed them. Unbearably.

Then they were turning into their own lane. Swaying above the porch, Gram’s hanging flower baskets were full of blooms now, instead of mere buds. The morning glories had climbed higher on the lamppost. One of the tabby kittens tumbled down the porch steps, and he was bigger than two weeks ago, almost full grown.

Lori felt like she was seeing everything with two sets of eyes or thinking with two separate brains. Part of her was still the pretrip Lori, and part of her was—she didn’t know who she was now. It was like she didn’t recognize her own home anymore. Had the shutters always been such a bright shade of green? Had the weeping willow in the front yard always been such a huge tree? Everything looked different than she remembered. And, somehow, at the same time, everything was so familiar, she felt like she’d never left.

That’s what Mom meant, Lori thought, when she said she would never leave Pickford County.

Lori hadn’t left, either. She’d just carried Pickford County around with her, everywhere she went. She understood now how that worked. She could fly to the moon and not lose Pickford County. And not lose herself.

It’s ground into our souls. Like dirt, Lori thought.

That was such a silly thing to think that she laughed out loud.

“Glad to be home?” Gram asked.

Lori looked out the window again. Somehow her two ways of seeing merged into one. She couldn’t separate out her reactions anymore. She just saw.

“Yeah,” she answered Gram. “We all are.”