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The first thing that hit me wasn’t the heat, though the heat was undeniable—the thick Virginia August kind that settles over everything like a heavy blanket. It presses against your chest, makes every breath feel slightly delayed, like the air itself is resisting you. It was the kind of heat I remembered from childhood, but memory had softened it. In reality, it felt sharper now. Less forgiving.
It wasn’t the cicadas either, though they were everywhere—loud, unrelenting, like the trees themselves were screaming. Their sound filled every gap between thoughts, rising and falling in waves that made silence impossible. It was the kind of sound you forget until you return home and realize it never really left.
It wasn’t even the smell that got me first—the familiar blend of cut grass, warm asphalt, and the faint sweetness of summer air trapped between houses. That smell used to mean safety once. It used to mean belonging. Now it just felt like something I was visiting, not something I belonged to anymore.
What stopped me completely was the garage.
The door was open.
Wide. Exposed. Empty in a way that didn’t feel normal.
I stood at the end of the driveway, my duffel digging into my shoulder, the weight of it suddenly more noticeable than the weight of anything I had carried in years. My boots were still coated with dust from three airports, two foreign countries, and a version of my life that my parents had never fully understood.
And there it was.
That open garage door.
Something about it made my stomach tighten instantly.
It wasn’t just open—it felt abandoned. Like someone had started a task and never finished it. Like the house had paused mid-thought and forgotten how to continue.
The sprinkler on my father’s lawn kept moving in its slow, mechanical arc, watering grass that didn’t need to be watered yet again. It glittered in the sunlight, turning everything into fragments of light and motion. The house, meanwhile, stayed still. Too still.