If I could wear a city like a sweater, I would wear Boston.
I stand behind a statue, staring up into the second-story window of an old stone apartment, and even now, hyper-focused on the window, the feathery wintertime beauty of the city is distracting. Every city looks better buried in snow, no amount of destruction outside its reach: ruins and craters where buildings once stood, overturned cars and piles of bones, the beauty of snow does not discriminate.
And, if timed right, can make an easy job of tracking.
They’d been a tough pair to miss: one set of boot prints, one set of loyal-to-the-bone paw prints.
I wonder if their pulses have consolidated yet.
At one point, the tracks multiplied, the comings and goings of a small group, all from the same stone apartment. Every window in this apartment is dark or damaged, save one.
From behind my statue, I stare up at this window with its small flickering light, and I wait. To what end? Do I plan to talk to him? Will I tell him who I am? Back at the Farmhouse, when I’d first had the idea to come find him, the question of purpose seemed insignificant.
Once I get there, I’ll know why I came.
Now I’m here and the same voice is saying, Once you see him, you’ll know why you came, and I can only hope that voice is right.
I wait.
I don’t know how long. Because time is wind.
And then it happens. It’s quick, and so I stretch the moment to my liking . . .
His face in the window, looking up at the night sky, the boy I loved, now half my age. And in this stretched-out instant, my pulse quickens as Harry jumps up beside him, puts two paws on the window. A second person appears now, and Lennon turns, says something to her—
They smile, and the window is empty again.
The voice was right: I know why I came. And where else I need to go.