Hemlock Grove

Chapter 4
After spending a very pleasant evening at home with her father, Sydney had a surprisingly unsatisfying nights sleep. When she first moved to New York City, it had taken her weeks to adjust to the constant sound of traffic, sirens, and loud neighbors, all of which were virtually nonexistent in Hemlock Grove. Now that she was back, though, she had to readjust to falling asleep in the quiet, as ironic as that seemed.

Another thing that kept her tossing and turning the majority of the night was the concern that maybe Michael would not be as cordial as she hoped with regard to their divorce proceedings. Perhaps he would decide that he wanted something out of their dissolved marriage like spousal support or emotional damage reimbursement. After all, at present she had a great deal more money than he did. The Michael she married nearly ten years earlier would not have sought out such things. However, the Michael at present…well, she wasn’t sure, but she needed to find out as soon as possible.

After eating a very light breakfast consisting of only coffee and a single piece of toast, Sydney showered, dressed and debated her course of action. She knew without a doubt that Michael would be working at his father’s auto garage; finding him was not the issue. The problem was that after eight years she could not simply stroll into the center of town, where the garage was located, unnoticed by all the town residents.

Undoubtedly, the majority of the people would be aware of her presence after the public fight she had with Michael the prior day plus the brunch she had at Amelia’s. In fact, she was shocked that people had not come knocking on the door to see what she was up to. Then again, perhaps they were not that brazen; nosey, yes, but bold, not always.

As much as she wanted to simply slip in, get her divorce, and slip right back out again, she was far too familiar with the workings of a small town to believe that was possible. Still, she hoped to make as tiny a splash as possible on the local gossip radar. Though she knew they would gossip wildly no matter what happened, she always preferred to stay out of the main lines of conversation since it was rather unnerving to walk down the street and know that everyone around was whispering about you. Sadly, that had happened shortly after she and Michael eloped; that event had rocked the whole town.

Upon convincing herself that staying cooped up in the house was not her style, Sydney grabbed her purse and headed out the front door wearing the most comfortable shoes she owned. She was going to walk through town and answer any questions fired at her on the way so long as they weren’t too personal. That way, she would get all the bad out of the way all at once and she could have peace for the remainder of her stay in Hemlock Grove, or as much peace as she would ever get while staying there.


As she walked through the streets of her former neighborhood towards the main road, she was surprised how empty they were. It was the beginning of summer and she would have expected dozens of children to be out on the streets playing with one another like she had done during her youth. The only person she saw outside was one lone boy bouncing a basketball in his driveway. Considering that it was only the second week in June, it was possible that some of the students were still in classes. Then again, she supposed they may have just been inside playing video games as children tended to do.

The first town hangout she came across was Hemlock’s Diner, the main eatery in the area. Amelia had been the head waitress there for as long as Sydney could remember and she debated stopping inside to say hello, but she quickly rethought that decision knowing it was not a good idea to walk into the den of a lion covered in blood. Instead, she crossed the street and continued walking, knowing that it was very likely everyone seated by the dinner windows was staring and pointing in her direction.

After just another minute of walking, Sydney had her first encounter with residents of Hemlock Grove dying to speak with her. Mae’s Daze was the local barber shop salon and a favorite hangout of the sixty-five and over crowd. There, Sydney found a few former educators from Hemlock High who were anxious to find out how she was fairing in the big city. She was glad to talk with them for a few minutes before pressing on; she was just a few minutes from the center of the town and Vaughn’s Auto.

After trudging up the high leading to the town center, Sydney came to a dead stop. Straight ahead should have been the old, rather rusted Vaughn’s Auto sign that had been there for nearly half a century, ever since Michael’s grandfather had opened the shop. Instead, she saw a bright shiny new sign displaying Vaughn’s Used Cars & Auto Repairs. Exhaling with mild disbelief, Sydney increased her walking pace, anxious to see the changes that had occurred in the usually stagnant town.

As she neared the recently (at least recent within the past eight years) remodeled building, her jaw began to creep towards the pavement. Vaughn’s Auto Repairs as Sydney knew it was a worn down garage on the street corner capable of housing three cars at once. A tiny office was attached to the building, but it was mostly unimpressive. Now, it seemed, that garage had been torn down and rebuilt into a very modern and crisp structure. Also, the Vaughn’s had expanded further down the block to another building surrounded by a parking lot filled with about fifteen used cars, all for sale. Utterly amazed, Sydney hurried across the street and began to wander through the rows of cars.

“Can I help you?” asked a young, well dressed man who was obviously a salesman. Sydney vaguely recognized this fellow as a person she attended high school with, though he was a few grades younger than her.

“Oh…uh… no, no I just came to see-”

“Sydney! I was hoping you would drop by!” Bill Vaughn grinned as he crossed the parking lot to greet her. “C’mon, c’mon let me give you a tour.”

Sydney stepped forward and allowed Bill to guide her with an arm around her shoulders as they made their way to the new garage-slash-office building. “Bill I… I had no idea that you were planning on expanding this way…”

“Well to tell you the truth I wasn’t,” Bill chuckled. “You know me – I’m old and set in my ways. I was perfectly happy just running that garage…but Michael convinced me to do otherwise.”

“M-M-Michael?” Sydney stammered in utter shock. She had no idea that he had such ambitions. Then again, the last time she was in contact with her soon to be ex husband he was a bit too wrapped up in fixing up their house to think of anything else.

“Yes Michael. Right around the time you-” Bill stopped himself short, cleared his throat, and changed his line of speaking, not wanting to say ‘around the time you left’. “Just as you were probably movin’ to the big city, Michael came to me with this crazy idea. At first, he just wanted to update the garage a bit – which I couldn’t really argue with since it was in a rather poor state. Then, he just kept talkin’ about expansions and...well, you know him when he gets his mind on somethin’ its hard to get him off of it. Like a dog with a bone that kid,” Bill laughed.

“Yeah,” Sydney exhaled.

“Well anyway, it took us a few years to get everything done but here we are. It’s goin’ well, too,” he smiled.

“I’m very glad,” Sydney said. Then, she was silent as Bill showed her around their new office and garage. Part of the tour was the (in Bill’s words) swanky office he shared with his son. Sydney took notice that both of the desks in that room were empty, and she was just about to ask where Michael was, when she found her answer.

“What are you doing here?!” Michael asked with disgust as he walked into the office carrying half a dozen bags of McDonald’s food. Obviously, he had run out to get lunch for himself, and possibly a few others judging by the amount of food he had.

“I came to find you,” she said, trying to maintain as polite an exterior as possible. Meanwhile, Bill slunk back into his office, feeling it was best to remain behind closed doors.

“Well you shouldn’t be here; I’m working,” he snapped, tossing the bags down on a nearby empty desk.

“I just wanted to talk; we have to talk,” she said.

“Well I don’t have anything to say.”

“Look, Michael,” Sydney said, her tone growing progressively sharper as she became more and more irritated with his attitude. “I don’t know why you’re being such a jerk about this but-”

“ME?! You’re calling me a jerk. You are calling me a jerk?! Oh that’s rich, that’s real rich Sydney. You know what? Why don’t you just get the hell out! You don’t see me coming to your work and making your life miserable!” he insisted.

“Fine!” she snapped at him before storming out of the office and slamming the door behind her.
 
Syd isn't going to go as unnoticed as she would like, with Michael refusing to sign she is going to have to stick around for a bit.
Great update
 
I really want to know what happened to that house.... I'm sensing a very Notebook-like transformation... 🤷


Great chapter. Can't wait for tomorrow's!
 
Chapter 5
“So,” Jack asked when he walked into the kitchen and found his daughter stirring a pot on the stove, “how was your day?”

Sydney grumbled under her breath. “You mean you don’t already know?”

“Well,” Jack said slowly, “I did hear something between a rather public confrontation between you and Michael…”

“You mean in the middle of his father’s used car dealership? Uh, yeah…meanwhile, when they hell did that happen?! Since when is Michael such an entrepreneur?!”

“I don’t know what you mean…”

“Bill told me that it was Michael’s idea to branch out into the used car business,” Sydney explained further.

“Oh, well I hadn’t heard that. It doesn’t surprise me, though. Since you’ve been gone Michael’s been rather focused on his work,” Jack told her.

“Well apparently that’s made him a royal pain in the ass,” she muttered. Her father gave her a disapproving look, mostly towards her language use. “Well it’s true! I don’t understand why he won’t just sign the divorce papers. You’d think he would want to get on with his life. I mean, he’s been dating…right?” she questioned.

“I really wouldn’t know,” her father said, raising up his hands in defense. “Perhaps Michael just wants some time to get used to the idea of divorcing you.”

“Dad, seriously?!” Sydney laughed in disbelief. “Its not like we were happy as can be and then suddenly out of the blue I asked for a divorce. We haven’t even been in the same state in eight years!”

“But that’s the thing,” her father challenged. “This is out of the blue. You two had gotten used to just coexisting married only in name. Now, suddenly, you’re ending it. You’ve probably been thinking about this for quite some time, but as far as Michael knew, you were just going to stay married forever and never come back and ask for a divorce.”

With this new information, Sydney sunk slowly into a nearby chair. Her father did have a point, a very good one, too. She had been thinking about the divorce for about a year. It took her a few months to go to a lawyer and then a few months after that to sign the papers herself and then nearly six months before she worked up the courage to face Michael in person. It was unfair of her to just show up out of the blue and expect Michael to sign the papers immediately. She knew him better than most people and she knew that he was not a spur-of-the-moment guy. Well, he had been, but only one instance in his life: when they eloped. He needed time to think and weigh the consequences, so it was only fair the she give him time to do that with regard to their divorce.

“Your right, Dad, your right. I’ll let Michael cool down for a day and then I’ll go over to his house and speak with him calmly,” she emphasized.

“Good girl,” Jack smiled at her. “So what did you make for dinner?”

“Don’t get too excited, Dad,” she laughed softly. “It’s just soup. I’m afraid I lost all my cooking skills when I gained all my financial ones.”

“Nonsense, they’re just rusty. I’m sure if your life depended on it you could whip up a mean dinner,” he smiled.

“I suppose I could,” she smiled back; she had missed being home, even if it was just a tiny part of her doing that missing.

~*~

For all of Tuesday, Sydney did not bother Michael, at all. In fact, she didn’t bother much of anyone. She stayed in the house and just relaxed for the first time in a long time. She watched some TV, but since her father only received a handful of channels (he was not much of a TV fan) and she was not interested in soap operas that was very short lived. She moved on to some pleasure reading of old novels she found in her room, ones she had not read since high school.

For dinner Tuesday evening, she and her father went to the Hemlock Diner, which was her first ‘public’ appearance. She knew that Michael never ate at that diner unless forced to by her, so it was a safe location. Safe in the ‘at least we won’t have another awkward encounter where we’ll yell at each other’ respect anyway. She, however, was not safe from throngs of people asking her the same questions over and over and over again. She politely answered all of their queries, though she was so busy talking to everyone in sight she could hardly eat any of the dinner she ordered. Luckily, Amelia packed it up for her to take home in a nice plastic container with extra mashed potatoes just the way she liked them.

On Wednesday, Sydney tried once again to contact Michael. Not wanting yet another public humiliation, she called the used car dealership before stopping by unannounced. By speaking with Michael’s father, she found that he had the afternoon off. Apparently, he would be waiting for some sort of repair man, Bill wasn’t sure what.

With this information, Sydney grabbed her car keys and headed towards her former place of residence. She would have called ahead but that would have given Michael time to flee the premises. Not to mention the fact that she did not have a phone number since when they lived there one was not available. She merely hoped that when she arrived, Michael did not have his shotgun ready to take some shots at her rented car.


The former Branson property they bought to be their very own was located on the outskirts of town. The two acres of land consisted of mostly woods along with a small stream. To access the house, one needed to drive down a narrow lane cleared through the trees; the house itself was not visible from the main road due to the dense brush. Because of this, Sydney was not able to catch a glimpse of it until she was right on top of it; then, she gasped.

To say that Michael had fixed up the house would have been an understatement. Fixing up implied that it went from a hole-filled shack, to a place where one could live comfortably without fear of being rained on through the roof. Michael had made the house gorgeous with soft yellow paint and dark blue shutters that Sydney loved. He even had a small garden growing along the front porch, though Sydney suspected that was probably Amelia’s doing.

After string at the house for a solid five minutes, Sydney got out of the car, making sure to grab the file folder with the divorce papers on the way. She walked up the white painted porch and knocked twice on the front door. It opened rather quickly (most likely because Michael was hoping it was the repair man being shockingly on time), but when Michael saw who was standing on his doorstep he tried to shut it again.

“Michael stop,” Sydney commanded, jamming her foot in the doorway so the door could not shut. “We need to talk.”

“You’re not welcome here,” he growled.

“Really? Last time I checked I paid for half of this place,” she challenged. His look softened ever so slightly. “It looks beautiful by the way.”

“Don’t try and butter me up,” he snapped.

“I was just telling the truth,” she said honestly. He muttered something she couldn’t hear before stepping aside and letting her in the house.

“What do you want, Sydney?” he asked in a rather defeated way. She held out the folder as her answer. “I told you I’d sign ‘em when I was good and ready!”

“When, exactly, will that be?” she questioned. “I can’t just stick around here, you know; I have a job to get back to.”

“Well far be it from me to keep you here. Lord knows I couldn’t do it the first time,” he snapped. “Why don’t you just go now? I don’t want you here and I’m waiting for someone!”

“The repair man; I know,” she said softly, still stung slightly from his comment about being unable to keep her there. Amazingly, he was not one hundred percent of the reason she did not return to Hemlock Grove. At least in part, she was doing it for herself; her career.

“No, not the repair man,” he said. She gave him a questioning look. “Well, yes, the repairman but someone else, too…a-a woman!” he insisted, pointing at her.

“A woman?” she raised an eyebrow at him. He nodded firmly. “A woman is coming here at one thirty on a Wednesday afternoon? What is she, a hooker?” He gave her a rather glaring look. “I see…so what is this woman going to do when she gets here? Is she a maid?”

“No, she’s not a maid. I’m capable of cleaning my own house,” he said, gesturing around. Sydney looked around the room and saw that while it was not harboring any mold or small rodents, she would not exactly have called it ‘clean’.

“Really?” she challenged.

“Yes…I’ve just been busy lately…”

“With this woman?” she asked, mocking him slightly.

“Yes! Yes I’ve been busy with her and she is coming over this afternoon so…so we can have sex,” he said sounding progressively more idiotic by the moment.

Sydney could not help but laugh at this. “You are pathetic.”

“Not as pathetic as you,” he retorted childishly.

“I’m sure,” she rolled her eyes. “Look, if you just sign the papers I’ll go. You never have to see me again.”

“Oh you’d like that wouldn’t you,” he said, his eyes narrowing towards her as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Heaven forbid you’d have to come back to your old hick town after living in the big city with your posh, swanky friends. I bet when they ask you were you grew up you don’t tell them the truth, or you tell them the whole town burned down just so they don’t know where you came from.”

Sydney glared at him. “Excuse me, you don’t know a damn thing about my life in New York.”

“Oh I think I do. I think you go to work everyday and you work for those slimy CEOs embezzling money from everyone and you schmooze fancy clients so they’ll give you lots of money and you take them out for dinner and drinks…and then you go home to your empty apartment and count your money because that’s all that matters to you in your empty, empty life. You have no friends. You don’t want any, either. You just want your money. After all, that’s why you left here, isn’t it? Couldn’t stand being middle class any longer…”

Tears brimming in her eyes, Sydney forced herself to stand firm. “Why don’t you just go to hell Michael!” she shouted.

“Why don’t you just get the hell out of my house!”

“Fine!” she shouted, throwing the envelope containing their divorce papers at him.

“Fine!” he retorted, but his response was muffled by the slamming of the front door as Sydney left as quickly as possible.
 
While I don't agree with his method of telling her, I think Michael may have a point. Syd found a career that led her into a fancy life she had never experienced before and she loves it so much she can't leave it, even for Michael. I'm sure Michael tried to fix up the house and the car shop to make it more enticing for Syd to stay if she did come back, she would have a "fancy" lifestyle by Hemlock Grove standards.
Great update
 
Michael is really being a pain about not wanting to sign the papers, but I don't really blame him. He is still really in love with her.

texasalias
 
oh my goodness gracious......seriously........if either one of them tells the other to "just go to hell" one more time...I mean honestly...yes I understand why he's upset at her, as well he should, and I understand why she left, I was in the same small-town-everyone-knows-everyone-elses-business-all-the-time-no-matter-what lifestyle and all I wanted to do was get out....which I did, although I go home a lot to see my friends, but he needs to understand that the small town isn't for everyone, and she needs to understand that he still loves her, which I think she does, and as soon as Michael can face that truth and get the giant ass stick out of his ass, then I think they will be ready to talk to one another...I mean she was willing to talk to him and all he can do is push her away..........hmmmm wonder why she left...can't wait for more!
 
“Yes! Yes I’ve been busy with her and she is coming over this afternoon so…so we can have sex,” he said sounding progressively more idiotic by the moment.
I laughed so hard at this, it really came out as that pathetic.

He made Sydney cry with his argument though, so I think he may have a point somewhere. He's just not expressing it very well and he obviously hasn't let go of that part of his life. I even suspect that he didn't really date much, or anything in the past eight years. He's really angry.
 
Chapter 6
As Sydney stomped her way out of Michael’s house, she realized driving was probably not the best idea, so instead of getting in her vehicle, she walked pass it and towards the woods where a narrow path awaited her.

After ten minutes of fighting her way through overgrown brush and tree branches, Sydney arrived at a clearing. Before her flowed the narrow but fast moving stream that ran through Hemlock Grove. Part of the reason Sydney and Michael decided to buy the Branson property a decade earlier was the bridge going across that stream. For some reason, the two of them loved that bridge; it was where they shared their first kiss; it was a symbol of them. Tears returned to Sydney’s eyes once more as she walked up one side of the bridge and stood at the top, leaning against the railing. As she looked out across the moving water, she couldn’t help but be washed over with memories of her youth.


As was the nature of a small town, growing up, Sydney knew practically everyone just as practically everyone knew her. She had a fairly typical childhood with the exception of her mother passing away from cancer when she was just twelve years old. After that, her mother’s close friends, Amelia among them, took it upon themselves to make sure that Sydney still had an adult female presence in her life just incase she had questions that could not be answered by her father.

Because of this, Michael was almost always around. Of course, when she was twelve and he fourteen, they did not have very much in common at all and thus hung out only on rare occasions. The summer before her sophomore and his senior year of high school, though, that all began to change.

Late in August, the two of them were attending the MacDougal brothers’ end of summer bash. There, for the first time, Michael saw Sydney in a different light. This may have been in part because she was wearing a scandalously red bikini and, at the age of seventeen, he was apt to notice such things, but then again, she was Sydney, a girl he knew to be the sweetest in the whole world.

Shortly after that party, Michael showed up at Sydney’s house and invited her on a walk with him. She, having no idea of his growing feelings, was confused by this and even more confused when he kissed her on that bridge. She blushed furiously and asked him what was going on at which point he so eloquently told her that he hoped they could “you know, do stuff sometime…or something.” Luckily for Michael, Sydney had been fully smitten with this comment, despite what it lacked in vocabulary.

Once school began, the two began to date regularly, and it was no secret around their fair town that they were a couple. Michael’s parents were thrilled since they already thought of Sydney as a daughter. Sydney’s father, however, was a bit more cautious towards their relationship, but Sydney felt this was simply because Michael was her first real boyfriend and he was not too fond of the idea of her dating at all.

By Christmas, after barely a few months of dating, they both knew that their relationship was something special. Though Sydney was rather inexperienced when it came to her love life, she was not anxious to date anyone else; in her mind Michael was the perfect guy. Michael felt the same way about her.

After he graduated, he went to work in his father’s shop. In his mind, there was no other option. While his grades were not bad by any means (he averaged Cs), he never had the desire to seek further education. Sydney felt this was mostly because his father constantly brought up the subject that they would run the shop together after he graduated, and Michael felt he was to do this out of family obligation. Plus the fact that he had no specific career wishes gave him little motivation to do otherwise.

While Sydney had no problems with Michael’s chosen career path, her father did not feel the same way. He did not think it was appropriate for his daughter, who would be attending college after she graduated, to continue seeing the town mechanic. Sydney scolded him on this point, stating that a person’s job did not matter; all that matter was who Michael was as a person and that happened to be the person she loved the most.


For the most part, things did not change for Sydney and Michael as Sydney continued her high school education. The only major change was that on Valentines Day during her senior year, a year and a half into their relationship, they finally crossed the intimacy barrier, a first for both of them. A month and a half earlier, on Christmas Day, Michael had given Sydney a promise ring and with it came the promise that, one day when they were ready, they would be married.

In July, after Sydney graduated, a giddy evening filled with wine they stole from Michael’s parents’ house led to the two of them eloping the very next day. Of course once they sobered up they realized they needed to have a very detailed plan or their marriage would not work out at all. Two hours of discussing and arguing later, they had one and went to their parents to discuss it.

Naturally, all three of their parents were shocked and mildly horrified at their decision. For weeks the atmosphere in both their households was very tense. Sydney’s father forbid her to stay at the Vaughn’s and would not allow Michael in their house despite their legal marriage. They lived separately as the town gossiped around them about a potential annulment.

Eventually, Michael’s parents came around and were actually happy about it, mostly because Sydney and Michael were practically over the moon themselves. They managed to talk Sydney’s father into at least being civil and allowing the newlyweds to stay in Michael’s room, like they planned to while their house was still unfit for inhabitation.

The first year of their marriage was very difficult, but they were better people for making it through. Like she planned, Sydney went off to college five hours away from her husband. Due to financial constraints, they were not able to visit more than one weekend a month, which led to many lonely nights. The up side of this was that Michael was able to get a significant start on their home before the winter months kicked in.

After celebrating their one year anniversary still happy and in love, Sydney and Michael felt as though from then on everything would be smooth sailing. They had made it through the hardest part and everything else would be easy, or so they foolishly thought. Little did they know, the worst was just about to begin.

A mere two days before Sydney needed to return to Penn for her sophomore year, she and Michael were continuing to work on their house, when they got into a fight. Sydney was concerned that their house would not be done by that Christmas as she would have hoped. She was not looking for much, either, simply a place to sleep where they would not die of hypothermia overnight. Michael argued back stating that he was working as hard and as fast as he could, but with a full time job that was not always easy.

Sydney left for school still not speaking with her husband after the angry words they had exchanged. A week later, she did call to apologize, stating that she would see him in a few weeks during her first break. He accepted her apology and gave one of his own, but they hung up still feeling the strain on their relationship.

The next time they saw each other it wasn’t the same. They were silent, not knowing what to say to make it better, feeling it would only get worse. Working at their house again, they argued once more, speaking the last words they would ever speak in eight years.


“…how can you yell at me for not being finished when you are clearly not doing your share?!” Michael demanded of his wife, throwing down his hammer out of frustration.

“Me?!”

“Yes you!”

“Michael, I’m going to school five hours away. What the hell am I supposed to do?! Come pound a few nails after class?! That’s impossible and you know it! This was our agreement: I would go to school and you would stay here and work on the house,” she told him.

“As far as I can recall, that was
your idea and I don’t remember agreeing to it,” he said.

“Funny ‘cause you did,” she muttered.

“Well it’s not fair! How can I do all this work all by myself when I work all day long too?!”

“And you don’t think I’m working?! You think I’m out drinking beer at night and laughing at my poor lowly husband back home?!” she snapped.

“I didn’t say that,” he hissed. “I’m saying you need to pull your weight here.”

“And I’m doing that by going to school so I can make money so we can afford this nice house,” she returned. He turned away, shaking his head. “You know what I think this is about? I think you resent the fact that I’m going to school and you’re stuck here.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he spat.

“You’re damn right it is! You had your chance Michael. You could have gone to school and I would have supported your decision to do that, but you chose not to; you chose to stay here. That was your decision and now you have to live with it. I chose to go to school so I could make something of myself whereas you chose to stay here and be a mechanic and now that’s all you’ll ever be - a worthless mechanic covered in grease! At least I’m doing something with my life!”

“Get out!” he shouted.

“Gladly!”



Tears streaming down her face at the recollection of the worst moment of her life, Sydney leaned heavily against the railing. She wished she hadn’t run; she wished she could take it all back, but she could not. That was her decision and she had to live with it.
 
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