Place We Were Made

Famous in a Small Town

Betty pulled into the driveway and parked next to her mom's car. She hadn't been home since she left almost eight years ago. She had never gotten a desire or inkling to even consider making the drive from the city back to the farmlands of Upstate New York, but lately she had been feeling homesick.

She had recently finished her first book tour. She had gone all over the US and then overseas to a few countries. It was the most exciting experience of her life, although she had never felt lonelier. Just before leaving, her and her fiancé of three years had broken up. She put on a brave face and only allowed herself to be upset over it for a few moments at a time, never letting it overtake her for too long. She was determined to do better than him.

When she had told her mom what happened, it didn't take long for her to convince Betty that coming home and staying home for some time would be beneficial. So that's what brought her here, sitting in her car, anxious to see everything that had changed over the last few years.

With a deep breath, she finally stepped out of the comfort of her car and crossed the driveway to the front steps. She knocked on the door and pulled her sunglasses off of her head so she had something to fidget with.

Alice was the one to open the door seconds later, a large grin on her face. "Your dad's going to be so excited to see you," she said softly, pulling Betty into a long, tight hug. They were both fighting tears when they pulled apart. "God, look at us," she chuckled, drying her eyes. "Everyone's outback."

"You invited everyone over?" Betty asked, trying to hide the nerves she felt because of this. Her mom loved to host, so 'everyone' can either mean their close family or the whole town.

"Just your sister and the twins and her husband," she shrugged, and Betty exhaled deeply. "I'll let you catch up with everyone else on your own time. I did invite that Jones boy, though. The one who you used to run around with," she added as if 'Jones boy' didn't spark every flame in Betty's body that had been out for years. "But he said he was busy on the farm and couldn't make it."

"On the farm? His dad's farm?" she questioned in disbelief. "He said he was selling the farm."

She shrugged. "You can check later. He took all of his father's property when he passed. Why didn't you just walk around back in the first place?"

"I wasn't sure where you would be so I just parked and walked to the front," she explained. "It would have been a little starling if you saw me peering through the back door, no?"

Alice chuckled and nodded, opening the sliding glass door. Polly's head turned quickly and she grinned. "Look at you!" she squealed, hurrying over to pull Betty into a tight hug.

Polly was the one person she was looking the most forward to seeing. In just a few weeks it would have been exactly 12 years since she had seen her. As soon as she had graduated high school, she left with a group of friends to travel across the United States and then went to college in California. By the time she moved back to Upstate New York to be closer to family, Betty was over halfway through writing her first book and was newly engaged.

The emotions she had felt hugging her mom again came back ten-fold while hugging Polly, although she somehow managed to keep it at bay. "You're so grown up now," she laughed, smiling somberly. "You look so different in person than you do over the phone. You're so... real."

"Well, I hope I would be," she laughed, tucking hair behind her ear. "We have to do something sometime soon. Get drinks or dinner, because we're adults and we do that stuff now."

Polly chuckled. "It's so weird hearing you talk now. I feel like you have such an adult voice. It's going to take a little to get used to."

"It's weird hearing you talk," she laughed. "You're so... mom-ish now, I can just feel you never saying curse words anymore." She smiled to herself and sighed, asking, "Where are the twins?"