all the way home

By the odometer, it's 38 miles to my brother's house, but it seems farther, as I stare at the endless red reflections of tail lights on the wet road and the swing of the windshield wipers. I drive past the dorm where I lived when I was a freshman, past the school I went to in fourth grade, past the liquor store where my mother's boyfriend bought bottles of apple wine. There's the hospital where my brother works and, on the next block, the place where, one Thanksgiving Day when I was learning to drive, our car skidded on the ice and down the hill.

I turn onto the highway and listen to the song my math teacher sometimes played in geometry class and another one that Patrick and I danced to at a party at someone's apartment in New York. The rain has turned to snow, and the sky is the same dull color as the asphalt. I slow down at the exit and take the left at the second set of lights. I'm on the main street, edged with old, crooked houses and dead end signs. My brother's driveway isn't plowed yet and I drive past it and have to back up, looking over my shoulder, my arm on the empty passenger seat. But it doesn't matter, because there's no-one else on the road and my tire tracks are the only marks in the snow.

The downstairs lights are on and, though the porch window, I can see a blanket that our grandmother crocheted, folded neatly over the arm of the couch. The door's unlocked and I push it open and from the kitchen, Mattea calls, "Who's dere? Who's dere?" I take off my sneakers and put my backpack down on the bench next to the mirror and my brother is standing in the hall and he's carrying Mattea, and in the sudden warmth and brightness, I can tell that this is the place where all roads lead, that this where the journey ends, that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.