Page 134 of Wonderstruck

One word. One word was apparently all it took to make me the happiest person at thirty thousand feet.

My smile stretched so wide it ached, but I didn’tcare.

Aurora Greene.

My girlfriend.

I rolled the words around in my head, savouringthem like a secret I wanted to shout at the top of my lungs. I could already hear myself introducing her.

Oh, hey, Grandpa, this is Rory. My girlfriend.

Wait, no. That didn’t feel big enough.

Aurora. My wife.

Okay, too far.

But still, I keep the thought tucked away for a rainy day.

I dipped my head toward her, the warmth of herbreath brushing my lips. My heart hammered in my chest as I closed the space between us, stopping just shy of kissing her to whisper, “I love you.”

“Miss Patty’s had a re-theme? Is the apocalypsecoming or something?” Rory giggled as her eyes held onto Miss Patty’s new storefront as we drove down Main Street.

I chuckled from beside her in the driver's seat aswe pulled up to a stop sign.

Daisy leant over from the back seat. “She, and Iquote, ‘wanted to appeal to a more hip demographic.’”

Unlike when I first saw it back in November, mystomach dropped, worried that Rory would onlysee how this place had changed even more since the last time she was here, worried that she’d spiral and we actuallywouldbe back on that flight back to New York like we’d joked about—

“I love it.”

I didn’t look at her, but my smile ached as herwords seeped into my head.

She was okay. She was doing okay.

Wedrove for another mile or so when the lanewe lived down finally came into view and I was turning left, up the ravine and through the steep path that took us to the top of the hillside. The ranch wasn’t at the very top of the mountain, for obvious reasons, but sat just somewhere between its base and the valley, looking over the faint lights of Honeywood, and the neighbouring town, Beauville.

“My house is…was… only five minutes fromhere,” Rory said aloud, to no one in particular, but then she threw her head over her shoulder. “How is it that we never knew one another if I lived close?”

Jess yawned as he said, “Surely we must havecrossed paths somewhere, if you were only five minutes from us.”

Daisy clapped giddily, shaking the car. “I’ll haveto get the photo albums out.”

My head fell back against the headrest. “Just aslong as the figure skating album stays—”

“Stays where? Hidden? Ha.” Daisy laughed.“Absolutely not. I have the opportunity to witness another person seeing you in a leotard for the first time and I’mnotmissing that.”

Rory turned to me, her voice a whisper.“Leotards?”

I eyed her, the unconscious smirk warming myface. “It was a phase.”

Jess snickered from behind me. “Tragic that henever grew out of it.”

After dropping Jess off at his house, a hundred paces away from ours, but still somehow on the next road over, we pulled up to the ranch not long after, passing the new sign for the Westbrooke ranch that had been next door to ours for as long as Grandpa had owned the place. All their horses were out, mingling with ours in the shared meadow and letting the last of the day’s light wash over them. I couldn’t help but smile as we pulled up to the house, the gravel beneath the tyres of my truck popping as I braked.

This was the part of coming home that I liked;the drive, looking out at the fields and the mountains, and being reminded of all the reasons why coming back here didn’t seem so bad on the face of it. It was a facade that didn’t know it was hiding an ugly truth, like an inviting doorstep that hid away a broken home.

We all piled out of the car, grabbed the bags and headed towards the porch,escaping the light snowfall that only just started. It was a huge oak wrap-around that Daisy and I would always chase each other around when we were little, the red panels of the house popping even more after the repaint that me and Grandpa did in the peak heat of July.

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