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Anytime someone dies, I always wonder, did they have regrets? Did they have unfinished business they didn’t get to do or say?

Did my dad have regrets? Had he wished he would have told me the truth? Maybe he didn’t want me to know in fear it’d hurt me more knowing.

Now I won’t know because he’s gone.

Do I have regrets? I have crushing regrets, but I’ve also had the chance to right them a few times and haven’t, so can I call them regrets? I think at this point, they’d be mistakes.

My eyes drift to the track, the pain in my chest suffocating. I draw in a heavy breath trying to relieve the ache. Being here, back in my hometown for the first time in years, it’s a reminder of the last time I was here, anxious, self-destructive and self-important, pushing limits.

Back then, pushing limits with a girl, only one girl, seemed to be what controlled me.

Why her? It’s really quite simple—loving her was a complicated happiness. Despite knowing she was too good for me, I never let go until I had to. I fell completely, forever, into solid fucking love that swam through my veins.

Back then, I wanted to be the breath in her lungs and the rhythm in her chest that would beat for only me. I wanted to forget, but I wanted to remember moments and memories that consumed my heart for years. I wanted kisses under grandstands and to go back to the night I left, kissing her innocence and the feeling of her soft skin against mine.

And even now, years later, I want to go back to the first time I touched her and remember that feeling and live in that moment. I want to get rid of this ache in my chest and the pure fucking torture of being so close now and not knowing how she’ll react to seeing me after the way I ripped myself from her life.

“I’m glad you decided to come home.”

The words move over me, a voice I haven’t heard in a while. I don’t turn around. I know exactly who it is.

Do you notice that guy standing next to the older guy with the white hair and eating a tomato at six in the morning?

I’m not the one eating the tomato. I actually can’t stand tomatoes and gag at the sight of the red acidic vegetable. But that’s a story for another day. I’m actually the one leaning against the chain-link fence, my arms crossed over my chest.

The guy? That’s Glen. The track maintenance supervisor here at Calistoga Speedway.

I don’t say anything to Glen, but instead, I stare at the track and the grass infield. My eyes move over the billboards, the walls and catch fences.

When I left Calistoga ten years ago, I said I wouldn’t come back here. I never wanted to.

Death changed those plans. And now I find myself back home looking at a track that holds every memory I’ve ever had about the girl I left behind.

My eyes move to Glen, and I think about what he said. He’s glad I decided to come home.

Is he really? After the shit I put him, my dad, her. . . this town, everyone through, why would anyone be happy to see me?

Looking at him, a memory hits my chest, damn near knocking the wind out of me.

“You didn’t tell her, did you?” The vagueness of the question spans greater than the history of this track, but something in the way he regards me tells me he knows.

Glen raises an eyebrow, turning to look at me. “About?”

I bury my hands in the pockets of my jeans. “Any of it?”

“No, that’s your business.”

He’s right. It is my business, but I wonder if she knows why I left. Glen does, but has he told her? It doesn’t sound like he has.

“They’re getting a divorce,” Glen notes, knowing I’ll catch the meaning without him telling me who.

I nod. “I know.”

If you had asked me a month ago what I’d be doing in the fall, I would have told you working construction while teaching camp tours at the natural history museum in Santa Barbara, and barely making rent at my one-bedroom apartment on the beach. I never had any intention of coming back here.

Never would I have guessed I’d be back in my hometown—a place I preferred to never set foot in again—let alone be the owner of the local racetrack that’s definitely seen better days.

Two weeks ago my dad, Mike, passed away after a year battle with lung cancer.