Homing Read Free Page B

moved in. L.A. had become a war zone.
    When she discovered that Julie had started experimenting with drugs, she hadn't been terribly surprised.
    The surprise was that she'd been able to put a stop to it.
    Life had ground on, getting a bit harder every day. It left her recalling Pleasant Valley with more fondness than she'd ever thought she could summon for that quiet, sun baked place.
    Then she'd come home one day and found the invitation to her high school class' twentieth reunion.
    Twenty years? Had it really been two whole decades since she'd seen the town she grew up in?
    instead of throwing the invitation away, she put it on the refrigerator door.
    For a week it had stayed there, held in place by a magnet shaped like a ladybug. She found herself wondering what her hometown might look like as seen through her own eyes instead of her mother's. What the kids she'd grown up with had become. Not that she'd had many friends as a child; Enid had seen to that, discouraging her from becoming close with any of her schoolmates, and forbidding her outright from associating with any of the farm kids who came into town for school every day. Indeed, she'd grown up in a farming community without ever having set foot on a farm!
    In the end, it was the realization that she actually knew very little about the town she'd grown up in that made up Karen's mind.
    "You can take care of Molly, and I'll only be gone one night," she told Julie. "And there's twenty dollars in it."
    For Julie, the bother of taking care of Molly was counterbalanced by the promise of freedom from her mother not to mention the twenty dollars. She accepted the job with no argument, and Karen had sent in her reservation for the reunion.
    The town was exactly as she'd remembered it.
    Familiar.
    And strangely comforting in its familiarity.
    And with comfort came dawning realization: she had never hated Pleasant Valley at all. It had been Enid who hated it.
    As she embraced old classmates and renewed old acquaintances, Karen realized that she still had more friends in Pleasant Valley than in Los Angeles, even after having been gone for more than half her life.
    Friends who treated her as if she'd never moved away at all.
    And one friend-Russell when-who had suddenly become more than just someone she'd known ever since kindergarten.
    After the reunion, all through the gray California winter, he drove the 200 miles down to L.A. to see her each weekend, and at spring vacation she brought Molly up to see the town and Russell's farm.
    Julie, totally involved with her friends at school, had refused to come, and in the end Karen let her stay in the apartment by herself.
    And now, six months after the reunion, she'd driven back to Pleasant Valley yet again. This time to stay.
    Though Julie had cried and protested, Karen stuck to her guns.
    "If you'd gone up at spring break with Molly and me, you'd know it's not anything like what you @ think it is," she told Julie.
    When her daughter tried to continue the argument, Karen put an end to it by reminding her of what had happened at her school only a few months earlier-a student had opened fire on a teacher, killing the teacher and three teenagers before finally turning the weapon on himself. "At least in Pleasant Valley you'll have a pretty good chance of surviving high school," she said. She'd reached out and pulled Julie close. "Come on, honey, it isn't the end of the world. In fact, if you just give it a chance, it could be the beginning of something wonderful for all of us, not just me. That's all I'm asking, sweetheart. Just give it a chance. Okay?"
    The argument had ended, but as they'd driven through Pleasant Valley a few minutes ago, and Julie saw the town where she would finish high school, Karen felt her older daughter's smoldering anger flare up, uttered grumblings.
    Molly, on the other hand, was bouncing in the backseat, clutching the ragged teddy bear she'd refused to leave behind and chattering in high-pitched excitement