From his apartment balcony, Eddie looked around at the city — the distinctive skyline, the lights and billboards, the streets full of people rushing from one place to another — and sighed heavily before turning to walk back inside. He’d lived in New York City for years now, ever since his mother moved them away from Derry when he was a teen, and it had always seemed like home to him, the place he’d always return to with fondness after vacations and business trips; but now, returned from Derry for the second time and with his divorce newly finalized, it all seemed so grey and dull and oppressive and suffocating in a way it never had before.

It wasn’t home anymore, he realized as he shut the door a final time on his now empty apartment, and perhaps the idea that it had been before was nothing more than a side effect of the loss of his childhood memories, but either way, as much as he loved New York, it wasn’t for him anymore and he just had to hope that this next step would be the upswing he needed to start really living his life for the first time in maybe ever.