A year after the whistle blew, I stood at the gates of the Works at seven in the morning and watched the day shift go in.

Three hundred and twenty people now.

Dale on his forklift, waving. Tiffany from the finishing department, with sawdust in her hair. Lily Sorensen, the apprentice, who'd just made her first dining table on her own.

And my dad, walking slowly in his canvas apron, with three young apprentices following him like ducklings.

Main Street was coming back. A hardware store had opened. A pizza place. A bookstore. The Maple Leaf Diner had eight staff and a line at lunchtime. Kristen had stopped talking about closing.

She and I have dinner every Friday now. Noah calls my truck “the lawnmower.”

Ten years ago, I drove out of Haddon in my dad's old pickup with one bag and a lot of fear. When I drove back in, the town looked at the truck, and the boots, and the flannel shirt, and decided I must have failed.

They were wrong. But I understand why they thought it.

When a town has lost everything, it gets used to expecting the worst. It forgets that sometimes people leave so they can learn how to come back.

The whistle still blows every morning at seven.

And on Factory Road, every morning, there's a line of people waiting at the gate.

Not because they've got nowhere else to go.

Because they finally have somewhere to be.

Welcome home.