Page 8 of Never Landing

“Whatcha doin’?” Jessie asked from behind me, wrapping their arms around my neck and dropping their sharp little chin on my shoulder to look where I was looking.

When I pushed the balls of my feet into the ground and swung back and forth, they picked their feet off the ground and squeezed harder, their little arms almost choking me. Almost. If I could be choked.

“Don’t hurt him,” Aurora chided, sitting in the seat beside me, her skirts billowing out as the swing swayed.

Jessie puffed out a breath and put their feet back down. “I’m sorry,” they whispered in my ear.

I shook my head. “It’s okay. It didn’t hurt.”

No, it was just the tight, choking feeling that I was already used to. Just seeing Everett made me feel like that. I couldn’t even say it was Jessie’s fault.

Jessie held onto the bar of the swing set and let themself fall, twisting around it with a put-upon sigh. Aurora looked at me with her brow cocked.

“They missed you,” she said quietly.

“Sorry,” I whispered back, no feeling behind it.

She shrugged, glancing toward the house. “You’ve been spending a lot of time here since he came back. Is that the same one as before?”

My turn to shrug. “I guess so.”

No, I knew, but she didn’t need to realize how far gone I was. We didn’t have to talk about it.

Aurora sighed through her nose as Jessie spun around and around the bar, their arms outstretched, leaning back to look at the purple sky.

“It’s okay, you know,” Aurora said after a while. I felt her gaze on the side of my face and swallowed.

“What’s okay?”

“If it’s time.”

A pile of rocks dropped in my stomach. “Time for what?”

Another sigh, this one even quieter. “We can’t all play forever,” she mumbled, almost like she didn’t want Jessie to hear, or Will, wherever he was. This was just for her and me. “Maybe”—she shifted her swing to the side and bumped against me gently—“maybe I’ll even grow up one day, and it’ll be a new adventure.”

At that, I couldn’t avoid looking at her anymore. What she said was impossible, sick, even. I threw out my hand to feel her forehead, and she giggled.

“I’m fine, Peter, really. I’m just saying that it’s okay?—”

“It isn’t. I’m notgoinganywhere, Rora. I’d never leave you and the kids. Never ever, so don’t even say—just don’t say that, okay? Don’t ever say it again.”

Her smile softened and softened until it disappeared completely. “I won’t say it, but it’s still okay, no matter what.”

“Yup!” I sounded too bright, too chipper, as I got out of the swing and held out my hand for Jessie. “Everything’s fine. But we’re going home, which is extra fine. More than okay. Home is great, right, Jessie?”

They beamed up at me, squeezing my hand hard. “Can we play pirates?”

“Yes. Absolutely. We are definitely playing pirates.”

And we weren’t ever going to think about what was okay and what wasn’t ever again.

5

Everett

The grocery store in Cider Landing was exactly as I remembered. Not a major national chain, but a tiny mom-and-pop shop, or in this case, grandmom-and-pop shop, as the couple who ran it were older than literally anyone else I’d ever known.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone told me they were both over a hundred, but still, he was in the produce section, arranging heavy watermelons, and she was at the register, ringing up orders with fingers that were nimbler than mine. I could only hope to be in that kind of shape at their age.

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