Unwrap My Heart

Capítulo 1

WILLY

I rolled into my hometown on a Friday evening with a sad country song on the radio and everything I owned in the back of my blue Ford Ranger pickup truck.

Pembroke had the dreary look common around New Hampshire in the second week of November. The leaves had already gone out in a blaze of color, leaving the trees bare. And the snow hadn’t arrived yet to give everything the dreamy winter postcard flair.

There was a new gas station since the last time I’d been home, and the car dealership had put on a fancy new addition with a lot of glass. Even the neighborhood where I’d grown up had changed over the years. Many of the larger homes had been broken into apartments and there were a lot more cars in the driveways.

But when I pulled onto my street, nothing had really changed. The cars were newer and a lot of clapboards had given way to vinyl siding, but it still looked like the stomping grounds of my childhood.

When I’d been home a few months before, I’d noticed the big oak tree in the Anderson’s yard was gone, and my mother had told me it had fallen prey to a heavy snowload the winter before.

I pulled the truck into my mother’s driveway and killed the engine. The big New Englander my parents had bought shortly after I was born still had clapboards painted a cottage green color, with white shutters framing each window. The porch was painted the same white color, and the attached, three-bay garage matched the house.

Home sweet home.

Leaving everything in the truck for the time being, I walked the flagstone path to the front steps as my mother stepped out onto the porch, a shawl she’d knit herself pulled around her shoulders and her feet shoved into sheepskin-lined suede slippers. Only when I was halfway up the stairs did I see the way her brows were drawn together, causing worry lines across her forehead.

I should have let her know I was coming.

“What happened, Willy? What are you doing here?”

“Hi, Ma. I got sick of wandering around and decided to come home.”

When she smiled and opened her arms, I bent forward slightly so she could hug me. The shawl draped around my shoulders along with her arms, and he breathed in the scent of my mother. As a child, I’d wrapped myself in the soft yarn whenever I needed comfort and my mother wasn’t available for a hug.

Being enveloped in it now brought a surge of emotion and nostalgia to the surface. I squeezed her tightly, not sure if I was giving or receiving the comfort this time.

Probably a little bit of both.

I’d flown home in June to bury my Dad. The heart attack was so unexpected, it was all I could do to get my mom and sister through the funeral and burial. They’d put off ordering the granite headstone until later, so I flew home again in September. We’d gathered at the cemetery on my dad’s birthday for the stone’s placement. It had been almost as hard a day as the actual funeral, and I’d stayed close to a week before leaving again.

“You didn’t have to come home, cariño,” she said, releasing me and stepping back so she could look up at his face. “I know I was a little emotional when you left, but I was just...having a moment.”

Having a moment?

She’d cried when I left and the memory of those tears had haunted me all the way back to California. Then they’d kept right on haunting me for weeks until I told my boss I was done, threw my crap in the truck, and started driving east.

“Thanksgiving’s coming. And Christmas.”

Our first without my dad.

I knew from experience how hard that was going to be for her.