TROUVAILLE ... l.danes (REWRITE)

chapter four; the present

ALL ROADS LEAD TO THE PAST, AFTER ALL 

two-thousand-and-two

SHELLEY WAVES her family off to work from her space on the porch swing, a second cup of coffee in her hands, letting the steam rise up around her face. Maybe she should have called before she showed up on their doorstep, maybe then someone would have stayed behind to keep her company or show her around town. But, then again, this is Stars Hollow and nothing ever changes around here. She could walk this place with her eyes closed, backwards, and she'd never get lost.

She finishes off her coffee and leaves the mug in the sink. Ceramic yellow with a sunflower painted on it, bigger on top than on the bottom so as to stack it with the other mismatched mugs her Mom bought from a garage sale back in the seventies. Red, green, orange and yellow. One for each of them and a guest. When she was seventeen and studying for her SATs, it was the yellow one she favoured.

Her footsteps echo through the silent house, alone in Stars Hollow for the first time in forever, when her life had always been full of something, someone, some noise somewhere she couldn't quite place. Has the house ever been this quiet? She climbs the stairs, listening to the creak beneath her boots. The house is aging alongside her parents and all she can do is watch, hidden behind a two-way mirror, screaming at them to slow down so she can catch up. She'd watched her Dad walk off in the direction of his practice situated just on the edge of town, slower than he had been when she was younger, shoulders hunched a bit more. Is he greyer than before? Her Mom had waved from her flower shop at the start of the square, just noticeable from the porch. She'd looked bigger, but smaller at the same time, like time was slowly slipping out of her fingers and there was nothing she could do to catch it.

Her parents will talk about how much she's grown tonight when they're in their bed, in the room next door to Shelley, forgetting to keep their voices down so she hears every word. Where can she buy earplugs in this town?

She leaves her clothes and shoes in a heap on the tiled bathroom floor. Maybe she can burn them in the next town bonfire, just throw them in when nobody is watching and let her life turn to ash. Everything she has built up turned to embers she can't put back together. Fitting, really.

After a shower where the water barely feels hot enough to tingle the skin – her parents had always complained about her favoured burning temperature for showers, so no wonder they'd changed it when she'd left – she undoes the clip in her hair to let it fall around her shoulders. Golden brown, unusually not a dye job no matter how many people ask, and fluffy when she hasn't had time to straighten it. After six hours of driving, she barely had time to look at her phone, let alone heat up straightening irons to attack the frizz surrounding her head.

She drops the towel in the hamper at the end of her bed, a pink netted thing that should have been trashed when she moved out. Everything in this room should have been trashed when she moved out, Shelley's not exactly the sentimental type, if she'd have come home earlier, she would have ripped it all down in one day. But, after everything, it's oddly comforting to be back in the same place that has always offered her sanctuary from the dangers of the outside world. Nobody can hurt her in here.

She tugs on a pair of high-waisted brown pants she'd brought with her and a red t-shirt she found at the bottom of her wardrobe. She doesn't even remember this shirt, but it's got her name sewn into the tag just like her Mom always did and it still fits, even if it is a bit tight around the waist where she tucks it into the pants.