The sun was starting its dive behind the buildings in the west, although the

sky was still blue, bright, and clear. It was a fleetingly familiar scene.

Except she didn't have any silver shoes to tap together. And even more disconcerting, she wasn't so sure anymore where home was.

Because the words were hanging in her heart in bright pink letters.

There's no place like home.

Chapter Twenty

Sunday's trip back the next day to Golden Grove was familiar, yet tense. Kate chalked it up to nerves. Her main proposal to Nitrovex was this Tuesday in front

of their re-branding committee. If they went for it, she'd win the deal for Garman. She'd be back one more time to wrap things up, and that was it.

It was the Super Bowl and World Series in one for her. Win this, and she'd

be the hero back at work, her career getting the boost it needed to move on up.

To where, exactly, she didn't know yet. That would have to come later.

Carol was out at a Community Center meeting tonight, which was good

because Kate needed the time alone to work. Yesterday's jaunt in Chicago with

Peter, although fun, had eaten up some clock, and she needed every slide and chart to be perfect by Tuesday. She still didn't have the main slogan or logo nailed down, which was her biggest stumbling block. Without that, her chances

of getting the contract were dicey. But she had another day or so to come up with

something last-minute. As long as she could keep the distractions at bay.

She found herself staring out the dining room window, past the draped lace

curtains towards Peter's house. The majority of those Super Bowl and World Series distractions lived next door.

Rubbing her eyes, she checked her watch. Carol wouldn't be home for

another couple of hours or so. Maybe she should take a break, a short nap, even.

She felt weary. Not tired as if she'd just gotten done with a mile run. Weary, as in her bones ached. Is this what it felt like to reach thirty?

She rose, then made her way up to her room. Her old room in her old house.

The stairs still creaked in all the same spots. She remembered as a girl how she

used to try to see if she could make it all the way to the top without a squeak.

Practice for when she would have to come home late and not wake her parents

after being out late. Something she never had to do.

Her room was at the end of the hall, at the front of the house, under the dormer and over the porch. She had picked it out when they moved in,

apparently. Her parents told her that. She was too young to remember. But it was

a good choice. Very artsy, she had thought, like a painter's garret in Paris.

She flopped onto the bed, calculating the familiar bounces. The ceiling

angled above her where the dormer was. Once it had been loaded with posters and paintings and drawings. And, yes, her My Little Pony mural she had painted.

It had been summer. She'd spent days working on it, checking to make sure the colors matched the boxes the toys came in.

That was probably when her parents started to get worried she'd be an artist.

She could tell. They were scientists. Art was something you did on the weekends

or while you watched TV, as a distraction. Not for a living. Starving in some flat with dirty wallpaper in New York City, smoking clove cigarettes. She smiled, picturing Lucius smoking his clove cigarettes, grinning through his huge walrus

mustache.

How we can change.

The ceiling was blank now, perfect for thinking, for leaving the past behind.

But that had proven hard to do the past few weeks. She hadn't expected it to be

so hard, being back. Golden Grove was just a place, like any other. But her hometown had other plans. It had leaked and spread into her like fresh watercolor paint. Or maybe it was the water washing, revealing what had been there all along. That she was home.

She shook her head, still lying on the bed. No, home is where you make it.

You make it—it doesn't make you. This was just old memories tugging at her.

What did they say? You only remember the good and forget the bad.

A thought unearthed itself from her mind. The closet?

She sat up. Pushed herself off the bed, kicking off her shoes as she went.

Over to the closet door. Opened it and fumbled for the pull-cord string on the side that turned on the light. The small space still smelled like old clothes and dust with a slight tinge of mothballs. Just the way she remembered it.

Squatting down beneath some of Carol's old dresses, she moved aside a few

shoeboxes on the bare pine plank floor. There. In the corner, one of the grooves

of the floor was just a little wider than its neighbor, with some scratch marks near the edge.

Reaching in, she pulled the board edge with her fingernail. It slipped a few