The Reunion

Returning home had never been a part of the plan. Not that Karlie Harris ever found herself to have a plan to begin with. It seemed that whenever life decided to throw something her way, she flew by the seat of her pants, hoping that everything would turn out alright. That kind of mentality seemed to have worked so far.

It had been a little over ten years since she had graced her hometown with her presence. There hadn’t been any need for her to come back. Nobody there wanted her around, and she didn’t feel like putting herself through that kind of turmoil.

But as fate— that funny little son of a bitch— would have it, she found herself buying the first flight to Pennsylvania after an unexpected phone call in the middle of the workday.

“Your father had a heart attack, Karlie. I need you to come home.” Aunt Lisa sounded frazzled which conflicted with the upbeat island-style music playing in the background. “I can’t—” she sighed, “I’m not able to make it. He needs you.”

“Needs me?” Karlie just about shouted. Scanning the floor around her frantically, she was relieved to find that no one had heard. She quickly scurried to the far wall of tall windows that overlooked the parking lot and retention pond. She watched as a soft breeze swayed the palm leaves. “He doesn’t want me there.” And I don’t want to be there either, she refrained from mentioning.

Her aunt was well aware of the situation and had maintained a good distance between Karlie and her father. “I don’t care what he wants.” Aunt Lisa said sternly. “He needs someone there. He had a heart attack.”

As if repeating the words to her would make her change her mind.

“He has no one else.” She pleaded.

He chose for it to be that way. Karlie wanted to say but bit her tongue. Dwayne Harris had made that decision when he kicked her out at eighteen.

“You go.” She said instead. “He likes you more than me.” He liked a lot of people more than Karlie. “If I’m there, he’ll probably have another heart attack in the hospital.”

Her aunt sighed again. She was fluent in the sighs that inflicted guilt. Karlie could feel it building in her chest. “Your uncle and I are on a cruise. We departed yesterday and have no way of getting there in time.”

Great. They were in the middle of a god damned ocean. Perfect. Wonderful.

That meant there truly was no one else that could go.

“He doesn’t want me there.” Karlie whispered. It was her last feeble attempt of getting out of going.

“He’s going to have to suck it up.” Aunt Lisa stated.

But what about me? she wondered. Would she have to just “suck it up” too?

Karlie wanted to see her father just as much as he wanted to see her.

“Someone needs to be there.”

Karlie stared out the airplane window, watching the patches of fields and forest blur beneath as she thought of her conversation with her aunt.

The hum of the engines was a dull backdrop to the chaos in her mind. She clenched the armrest as the seatbelt sign turned on, signaling the descent into the town she had vowed years ago she would never return to.

Over the intercom, the captain spoke in a crackled voice, announcing their imminent arrival and alerting them of the massive heat wave that they would soon feel once they were out of the airport. They hit a patch of turbulence, but Karlie’s churning stomach couldn’t be blamed on the bumpy descent alone. Just thinking of the messages, the ones she had received from her aunt yesterday, brought her back to the harrowing notion that she would be facing her father in less time than she would care to. She would have to share the same room, breathe the same air, as the man who had pushed her away with harsh words and cold silences, who now lay motionless in a hospital bed needing her help.

Her stomach dropped just as quickly as the plane when the wheels finally touched the tarmac. Returning felt like a trap – a very well, thought out and planned trap. She sighed, tapping her fingers on her thigh as she waited her turn to stand and grab her luggage overhead.

Karlie wasn’t the same naïve girl who had fled this town in tears, tail tucked tightly between her legs. No, she was tougher now, maybe even because of it. But was she tough enough to face the man who had broken her in more ways than one?

She inhaled deeply as she stood waiting for the rest of her luggage at the baggage claim, bracing herself for the inevitable. She hoped it would help steady her, but could she really handle what waited for her beyond the airport doors? How do you heal a wound that has been festering for years? Was it even something she wanted to heal?

Stepping out of the air-conditioned terminal, Karlie was hit by a wall of heat. She half expected Pennsylvania to be cooler, but the sweltering wave that greeted her felt like an annoying reminder of home in Florida. Yet, it was different—heavier, more suffocating, as if the weight of her past was pressing down on her along with the sun overhead.

“Jesus,” she muttered as she hoisted her luggage into the trunk of her rental car. Sweat trickled down her back, her shirt sticking to her skin as she opened the driver’s side door.

The air was thick with humidity, and every breath felt like a chore. Karlie fumbled with the keys; fingers slick with a now nervous sweat. She blasted the AC and slumped back into the seat, waiting for the stifling air inside the car to cool.

She tapped in the hospital’s address into her phone and pulled the rental onto the highway. It had been almost ten years since she had been back, and she could still vividly remember when to avoid the potholes in the road.

She chuckled when she unconsciously swerved a little out of the lane, crossing the solid white line, just to avoid the same hole right near exit 28, that had been there since before she had left.

Everything looked the same as it had, but it all felt different. The once comforting sight of the rolling hills and dense greenery now seemed foreign. She had lived an entire life outside of this county’s lines.

When she pulled off the highway and onto familiar backroads, they twisted like the memories she had tried to forget.

***

“You know that girl down the street, the one you used to ride the bus with?” Dad asked as he lifted the hood of Karlie’s Honda Civic.

“Who, Elena?” Karlie asked, her brow furrowed.

“Yeah. Do you still hang out with her?” He asked.

“No, not really. She’s mostly with upperclassmen now. She’s always out with Ryan and Carrie. They both live in the neighborhood on the other side of the elementary school.” She pointed in the direction of the school, but her dad wasn’t looking, paying attention to the car instead.

“Oh,” he said, muffled as he walked to get tools from the garage behind her.

Karlie thought she heard him incorrectly, because he couldn’t have said what she thought she had heard from the back of the garage. It was hardly loud enough to be heard from two feet next to him. “What?” She asked. Wanting him to repeat himself.

Without hesitation, or care, he told her, “I said, good.”

“Why is that good?”

“Because I don’t need you hanging around that.” He set a tool kit next to the front tire.

“Around… what?” She wasn’t following.

He grunted as he loosened a bolt somewhere under the hood. When he stood back up, he huffed as if he was frustrated that Karlie wasn’t understanding where he was going.

Karlie shrugged, palms lifting. “Why don’t you want me hanging around Elena? Her mom made the best dinners. She always had their house smelling amazing.” It was true. Mrs. Santiago would never let Karlie go home without eating something first. Even though Karlie would always argue that she only had to walk six houses up the street to get home, she had to eat something first. “Is it because when I’m over there all we ever did was play Halo?”

“At least that’s all that you were doing.” He stopped short and turned to her sharply. “That is all you were doing right?”

Karlie’s face scrunched in confusion again.

“You know that kid’s gay right?” He said it more of an accusatory statement rather than a question.

All emotion drained from Karlie’s face. “What?”

Her dad tilted his head. “C’mon kiddo. You had to know this already.”

No. No she didn’t know. Was that why Elena stopped hanging out with her? Had she been dating Carrie this whole time, and that’s why Elena stopped inviting her over? Huh, it honestly would make a whole lot more sense than just dropping Karlie as a friend altogether.

But why wouldn’t Elena just tell her? They used to tell each other everything.

“I don’t need you around that. It’s not right.” Her dad said, returning to working on the car.

Oh, right. That’s why Elena probably didn’t say anything. Good ol’ Dwayne Harris and his backwoods logic probably scared her off. Or maybe it was the abrasiveness she saw that he carried.

“I don’t really care if she is or not. It’s not my business.”

“Well, how does it make you feel? It’s disgusting, isn’t it?”

No, it wasn’t. “I mean, I’m hurt if she felt that she couldn’t come to me about it. But I’m not mad at her for not telling me. I’m more hurt that she stopped talking to me, and if this is why, then I should tell her I’m sorry.”

“Well, she isn’t welcome under my roof.” He said pointedly, not even looking at her.

Karlie really needed to get off this topic, and quickly. Her dad knew she didn’t care about any of it, but she knew his stance on the subject. Not that he would ever let her forget it. And she definitely couldn’t let it slip that she was questioning herself and working through a potential crush on her best friend.

“I just don’t understand it.” He said, making Karlie roll her eyes. He obviously wasn’t letting up.

“Well, you don’t need to understand it.” Karlie said as she sat on the driveway in front of her car. “You’re married to Mom, and that’s your life. And whatever Elena does isn’t yours or my business.”

He was about to continue, but Karlie cut him off.

“So, my advisor told me that I’m caught up on most of my core curricular classes for junior year. So, I picked up more art classes for next semester.”

“You’ll be a starving artist Karlie if you keep this up.” Jesus, he was relentless.

“It’s just a few classes, Dad.”

“Do you want that? Do you want to struggle for the rest of your life? Constantly having to depend on someone else to make sure you stay afloat?” Her father had yelled from under the car in the driveway. “Honestly Karlie,” he huffed. “Are you even paying attention?” He hollered again.

Karlie shook her head. “Yeah. What?” She asked after she managed to stop her eyes from rolling so hard that they’d get stuck.

“You need to watch what I’m doing. I’m not gonna let you just rely on some man to change your oil. This is one of the easiest things you can do, and I won’t have you going to some mechanic where they will force you to pay an arm and a leg for something simple. And I’ll be damned if I watch you wait on some guy you’re with, to do this either. It won’t kill you to get your hands a little dirty.”

Karlie tried her hardest not to groan at all the wrongful accusations he threw at her. So, she watched him as he unscrewed the bolt and the dark oil poured into the waiting container. The flow of oil was so steady it didn’t even look like liquid.

“Girl, when is your head not up in the damn clouds?” Her dad asked no one in particular. And Karlie figured, if it wasn’t actually addressed to anyone, she wouldn’t say anything.

But she was wrong. He had been waiting for a response.

“Hellooooo,” Her dad sing-songed and waved a dirty hand in front of her face to snag her attention.

“What!” She snapped. “I’m paying attention.” Which was the entirely wrong thing to say.

“I don’t need the god damned attitude from you. I’m doing this for you and you have the nerve to talk to me like that?” His voice rose with each word. “I deserve some respect!” He paused long enough to make a knee jerk reaction. “You know what,” He grunted as he slid back out from under the car. “You can do this your fucking self then, if you want to act like that.”

Karlie was still lying under the car but heard the tell-tale sign of something being thrown across the garage and slamming into the metal shelving unit on the other side. Then the door to the house slammed and all she heard was the sound of the last of the oil falling into the container below.

***

Karlie shook the memory away as she parked in the hospital’s garage. Her hands were clammy on the steering wheel, heart pounding from the growing anxiety gnawing at her as she stared at the building looming before her, and what waited inside; the confrontation that was a decade in the making.

She steeled herself with a large inhale as she walked to the reception desk in the middle of the lobby. It was so large it made her feel like a mouse in an elephant’s enclosure at the zoo.

“Hi, I’m here to see Mr. Harris.” She told the young woman at the desk.

The girl typed something in the computer and looked back up, “I’m sorry, but he’s still in surgery and will be going to the ICU. Only direct family members are allowed to visit.”

“I’m his daughter.” Karlie told her.

“Oh!” The woman practically squealed. “A daughter wasn’t listed in his file.”

Not surprising.

“I can show you my ID if that’s what you need as proof.” She said with hardly any emotion.

Once she was added to his visitors list, she was given the room number and made her way to the elevator. When nobody was in the room’s bed, there was a slight relief to know there was time to adjust to the situation. None of the nurses knew when he’d be out of surgery, and there was no way in hell that Karlie was going to just sit there and wait.

She tapped her fingers on the desk of the nurse’s station.

“Can I help you?” A blonde nurse asked. Her smile was impeccable and yet oddly familiar.

“I, uh… I’m not going to sit here-” She stopped herself. This woman didn’t need to know how she felt and that she hated the idea of sitting in an empty hospital room, waiting for her father to come out of surgery, to then have to sit around and wait for him to wake up. She really didn’t want to be the first person he saw either. It’s not like he had ever called her or showed up after she moved away. “I’m heading out. My dad’s still in surgery. Is it possible to get a phone call when he’s out?”

“Of course.” The woman tapped on the keyboard in front of her. “What room, and what is the name of the patient?”

“Dwayne Harris, room 405.”

The nurse hummed. “Wait.” She stopped and looked up, “Are you Karlie? Karlie Harris?”

Oh god. Where the hell was this going? “Maybe?” She told her hesitantly.

“Oh my God! Karlie Harris from Central High?” She asked, her voice rising almost four octaves from its original.

Jesus Christ. She knew that smile was familiar. So familiar that an eerie shiver crept down her spine. Karlie tried to look for the woman’s name badge, but it was turned around. The only thing visible was the RN tag at the bottom.

“It’s Emily! Emily Wrenn! Well, it’s Rupp now.” She flashed a ring on her left hand. “I got married two years ago.”

“Oh… uhm, congratulations.” Karlie said. Her voice was way too vanilla to be even remotely excited for the woman.

“How have you been? I haven’t seen you since graduation. Do you live close by? Oh, you know the reunion is coming up, I haven’t noticed you in here with your dad until now. How are you handling it? He should be out of surgery within the next few hours, and I’m told recovery will be a breeze. The heart attack wasn’t as severe as they first thought.”

That was way too many things to try and comprehend in what felt like three seconds. Emily had not changed one bit since the last time she saw her ten years ago.

Her bleach blonde hair was up in a messy bun, one that looked perfect as if she had meticulously put it up to only appear messy.

“I’m just going to head out for a bit. Get some fresh air… and something decent to eat.” She told her instead of answering her questions. Food sounded way more important than rehashing the past with Emily, and a drink sounded far better than waiting around for Dwayne to wake up post heart surgery. “Should I give you my number… to put in his chart?”

“Sure thing! We’ll give you a call as soon as he’s out.”

“Can you put a note in there to call me once he wakes up?” Karlie tried to give her a genuine smile, but it was physically painful. It’s a damn good thing she didn’t work around the public. It would probably kill her to pretend to be nice every day.

Thankfully, out of the hospital and away from Emily, Karlie found herself at a taproom that hadn’t been there the last time she was downtown. It was a decent place that had shockingly good food too. A pleasant surprise.