For almost twenty years, Matthew Harper lived at a deliberate distance from the place that had shaped him. The small Ohio town of Redwood Falls had always felt too quiet, too narrow for a young man carrying oversized hopes and a restless need to prove himself. He left believing that leaving was an act of love—that by going far enough, working hard enough, and sending money home, he could give his parents the security they deserved.
Distance became his routine. He followed work wherever it surfaced: construction sites that smelled of concrete dust and diesel, warehouse floors humming under fluorescent lights, endless highways unspooling beneath eighteen wheels. He learned to sleep in unfamiliar places, eat at odd hours, and measure time by deliveries and deadlines rather than seasons. When paychecks allowed, he wired money home. When he called, his parents sounded cheerful, grateful, reassuring. They asked about his routes, his health, the weather wherever he happened to be. They never complained. Matthew took their words at face value and told himself that silence meant stability.
Years slipped by like mile markers. Redwood Falls became a memory he carried quietly, something he thought of only late at night, parked at rest stops with the engine ticking as it cooled. He missed his mother’s cooking, the way she hummed without realizing it, and his father’s steady presence—never loud, never demanding, always there. Still, he kept moving. He believed motion was progress.
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