The dog heard him coming before I did. She woke out of a deep sleep on the rug and was completely alert and whining at the door. I knew this day was coming, but I had hoped there would be more time. More time before the past showed up, came knocking at the door.
Knowing exactly what needed to be done, I quietly disabled the alarm system--both the dog and the wired one. Slipping outside through the back door, stopping only for a beat to pick up the backpack that had been prepared for just this moment, I moved to meet the past. Treading lightly, watching my footsteps, I rounded the corner to the front of the house.
Standing just between my house and the woods I looked at the person I’d been waiting to appear for over two years.
In the moment before they saw me, the air went still. Time expanded and froze.
They turned to face me.
“Let’s go,” I said.
They stepped off of the front porch and we turned towards the treeline.
The trail was narrow, overgrown and unused since that fated night years ago.
Reflecting back, I didn’t know then how much those short moments hidden in the trees would change my life forever. I dreamed of moving far from this piece of land, but much like this path, I just couldn’t seem to find my way.
It wasn’t worth thinking of what might have been, and I snapped back to the present. We moved wordlessly; there was nothing worth saying as we got closer to That Place. I would always think of here as That Place. That Place that changed it all. That Place that linked us together.
Dropping the backpack on the ground, crouching close to the earth to open the zipper, I looked up at the only person that could ever understand what happened here.
“Alright, let’s get started.”
This story is part of a short story writing exercise that I am completing in 2020.