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***
When I was a little girl, I used to love horses. This was back in the early days, before the etiquette classes and the needlework and the piano lessons. When I was just young enough to get away with mucking about in the mud with the stableboys, away from the watchful eye of my mother.
As you can guess, I was spoiled as a child. I asked my father for a Shetland pony, once, and the very next day he brought home Polo: dapple-grey and stocky with a little star on his forehead, and I loved that pony more than I loved anything else in the world. It took Hogwarts for me to realise that not everyone lived the way I did, and I tried, in vain, to hide the markers of my privilege. But the horses gave it away.
Anyway, you’re not here to talk about horses. You’re here to talk about Draco and Harry. I’m getting to that.
I met Draco for the first time at Epsom Downs. The sky above was a crystal blue and the fairground thrummed with the sounds of a racetrack coming to life: the ringing of gates, the gallop of hooves. It was my first derby, and my father made sure it was the best one. Yawning metal rides criss-crossed over the grass, and everywhere I looked, there were people. They stood in lines to place bets and gathered in clusters to smoke cigars. But they parted ways for us when we walked by.
I saw them, then. The Malfoys. Lucius in sharp, clean-cut robes and Narcissa in a silk gown. Draco walked by his father’s side, and he wore his father’s arrogance in his bearing. When he tripped over a rock, I resisted the urge to giggle. He would not learn his mother’s grace until later.
He smiled at me, then, and there was nothing charming about it. That too, not until later.
“Hello, sir,” I said to Lucius, as he turned to me after the pleasantries were done. His gaze was penetrating and sharp, and he looked at me like I was one of the bets he was thinking about placing.
“And what is your name, young lady?” he asked. He was holding his cane loosely against his fingers, but his demeanour was stiff.
“Astoria,” I said, and then a little louder: “Astoria Greengrass.” It came out evenly, and I was proud that my voice didn’t tremble.
He tilted his head towards me slightly, and my father nodded at him in return, some kind of unspoken understanding. I sought out Draco and we shared a glance. I think even then, we knew what this was about.
That night, my mother told me I did well. She was combing the knots out of my hair and braiding flowers into it. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d done that for me. I was eleven at the time.
“You like to ride?” Draco asked me, sometime later. This was in Hogwarts, one of the earlier years, when the novelty of talking to an older boy had yet to wear off.
“Of course,” I told him, shrugging like it was obvious. “I’m quite good.”
He looked like he was about to answer with some snippy remark when Harry crossed us, fumbling for something in his bag as he passed the doorway. Draco shifted, and they bumped into each other. I stared at Draco. I could swear at the time the whole thing felt deliberate, but I told myself I was imagining things.
“Watch where you’re going,” Draco snapped, and his eyebrows were raised in that cocksure manner teenage boys sometimes grow into and never grow out of.
“Shove off, Malfoy,” Harry said, but he sounded tired. He stalked off into the corridor where someone was waiting for him, and I never gave it a second thought until now.
But I digress.
There were more derbys after that, more horseback lessons. I showed Draco around our farm and we’d go riding together. I’d race him, sometimes, and sometimes I’d let him win.
There were lots of things I sacrificed for my husband. Things I gave up long before I married him, and things I gave up after. The horses were the first to go. Mama always told me that no respectable girl would be caught straddling a horse in stirrups. And then she’d sit me down and lecture me about things like pedigree and good breeding like I was another one of our prize mares.
So initially, I was reluctant. I was a headstrong young girl, and the last thing I wanted was to be stuck in a loveless marriage. But I fell for him quickly. For me, at least, he was easy to love. Which is why when my parents told me what was going to happen, I didn’t protest.
“You’re sure you want to go through with this?” Daphne asked me, the night before the wedding. I was going over my vows and she was helping me memorise them, though she wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Yes,” I told her, and it came out the way I felt. Saturated with the delight of young love. “We love each other.”
“And what if he doesn’t?” she asked me. She’d never liked Draco. She thought him too flighty, too impulsive. “What if he stops?”
I shrugged. The idea was ludicrous. Draco and I would be together always. “Then I’ll leave him,” I said, and it was easy for me to say it. I knew it would never come to pass. I felt his love for me like a universal truth, I felt it in my bones. And if by some chance the unthinkable would come to pass, I trusted myself to recognise the signs.
I knew I would leave long before that happened.
***
Now, the thing about us purebloods is that we’re all the same. Rich? Immensely. Philanthropic? Insofar as it helps with the taxes. Ancient? Our lineage can be definitively traced back to 110 BC. Or something.
But we’re also proud – foolishly proud – and bull-headed to boot.
We put on airs when we don’t have to and spend our days scheming circles around each other. What's more, we’re positively vicious to outsiders. Couple that with a penchant for supremacist overlords and poorly disguised prejudice, and you’re left with us getting caught on the losing side of a war we started.
And so began the painstaking task of rebuilding what little of our social currency was left amidst the post-war wreckage. I was lucky; the Greengrasses had come out relatively unscathed, but the Malfoys, well. You know what happened there.
Still, I had a plan. I’m a smart woman; I never do well in the limelight but I can make things happen. And I made them happen for Draco.
The youngest member of the Wizengamot – they say he’s charming, charismatic. His voters love him, the same ones who used to hate him. He contests from Wiltshire now, a Malfoy stronghold, but people always seem to forget how it all began – in a small district called Fairview in the Regency town of Cheltenham. My own home. Draco may have been the face of that election, but I commandeered the soul of his campaign.
I know the way he looks now. Expensive robes tailored to fit him, pristine, untouchable. Can you imagine the man with his shirtsleeves rolled up and his hands in the dirt? Impossible.
He took care of the meetings, the black tie ones with expensive champagne flutes and hors d'oeuvres that shrink year after year. I took care of the rest. Going door-to-door in the summer heat with flyers for my husband while he sweet-talked the big sponsors into donating. Not for him, never him; always for something else. The war-orphans, maybe, or the environment. Sometimes he’d work the werewolf-rehabilitation angle. That’s how he came across Harry.
***
At first, I was happy. I can picture it in my head, the way he’d traipsed into the room instead of trudging, a rare buoyancy about him after a fundraiser gone late. The sky outside was an inky blue and there were no stars in sight. He walked in and shut the door behind him and after that, all I saw was him, grinning from ear to ear, hair in disarray where his hat had rested.
“Astoria,” he said, still beaming. Mipsy came to take his coat. He shrugged out of it and half-tossed it to her without looking, buzzing with energy.
“What is it? Did the Prewett endorsement come through?” I asked, excited. I’d calculated our expenditure down to a T, but I was a novice back then. I didn’t know the way elections eat through your funds, ravage them. Later, I began to tally up our possible expenses and double them. Even then, it wasn’t always enough.
“No, no it didn’t.” He took me in his arms and twirled me around the foyer like we were dancing. It made me feel giddy and ridiculous and confused, and I looked to him for clarification. He smiled at me and continued: “But we don’t need Prewett anymore. We don’t need anyone.”
“What do you mean?” I removed myself from his arms, mentally cataloguing his appearance to check for possible signs of a fever of some sort. Maybe the stress of electioneering had gotten to him.
“I mean,” he said, cupping my face in his hands, “that we don’t need any other sponsor. Because we just got ourselves the biggest sponsor of all. We just got ourselves Harry Potter.”
My eyes widened. I had to take a step back, more out of confusion than anything else. “How did you manage that?” I asked.
He looked at me with this kind of beatific happiness. I thought I understood it, then. The bone-deep contentment that comes with making inroads into the thing you’ve been slogging towards, day-in, day-out. Only now, I realise that it may have been a different kind of happiness. And maybe that’s when I began to lose him; right there, in the foyer of the house we’d built together.
“Granger helped.” He waved his arms vaguely, dismissively, and I didn’t push. I thought to myself that he must be tired. It didn’t occur to me that I was also tired, that I had also spent the day writing his speeches and negotiating with his advertisers. I was only thinking of him.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s get you to bed.”
He looked at me gratefully. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he said.
At the time, I believed him.
***
Draco loved to get ahead of himself. He could afford to, he had the vision. I was the one working logistics, and this thing with Harry, it wasn’t as easy as he’d made it out to be. Harry was reluctant at first, suspicious. It was true that Granger had pushed him into investing in Draco’s platform, and his discomfort seemed only to grow with every conversation the two of them shared.
“I just– I don’t know how to get through to him,” Draco lamented to me at the next fundraiser Harry showed up to. “I’m trying to play nice but he gets on my fucking nerves like no one else.”
“Shh.” I comforted him, rubbing circles into his shoulder blades in the way I know calms him down. “I’ll take care of it,” I told him. And I did. I took care of it, like I always do. It wasn’t easy. I was Draco Malfoy’s wife, and that was enough for Harry to distrust me. But I won him over. I convinced him to sit down with me for a chat over tea.
“Five minutes,” I told him. “And after that, if you still want to leave, I won’t stop you.” It was risky, telling him that. I sounded more confident than I felt. If we lost him, we’d be back to square one. I’d have to take more funds out of the Greengrass vault, and I really didn’t want to do that. We’d already sunk too much money into this.
Harry hesitated. “Alright,” he said, finally. “Five minutes.”
I called for tea and biscuits and we sat in the study. Mipsy brought out the guest china and Harry commented on how delicious the scones were. It was all very polite, very awkward, but I got him to settle in, and I explained to him the finer points of our manifesto until he understood we were serious about these things. Soon enough, he’d eased back into his chair, asking me questions about our platform and, by the end of it, he promised to donate double his initial offer. I felt so proud of myself, then. I couldn’t wait to tell Draco.
It’s funny. Sometimes I think about what would’ve happened if I hadn’t been such a good campaign manager. If I hadn’t been such a good right hand.
If I hadn’t been such a good wife.
***
There were little things that came after that. I don’t think either of them even knew it at first, the way they were changing, gravitating towards each other. It started with the glances. I noticed them, first, at the Edgecombe fundraiser. Victor was clinking his spoon against the glass so hard I thought it was going to break, and when he began his toast, I searched for Draco from among the crowd so we could roll our eyes at his speech. When I found him, he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at Harry, and they had their eyebrows raised at each other, the beginnings of a secret smile being shared between them. I thought nothing of it. Draco needed people in high places, and even the Minister of Magic falls secondary to the Saviour of the Wixen World. They began to talk after that, hushed exchanges under the steady drone of Victor’s voice. I took a sip of my champagne and settled into my seat. Draco would tell me about it later, I was sure. Although by the time we got home, it had slipped my mind completely. It never came up after that.
Eventually, I stopped accompanying him to fundraisers altogether.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” Draco asked me, the first time I brought it up. We were having breakfast on our front porch, and it was one of those warm, syrupy mornings. Children ran to and fro on the road across from our fence, giggling sweetly to each other, and there seemed to be this bubble of soft innocence around them. I remember thinking how nice it would be to have children of our own someday. A little boy with hair like Draco and my eyes. Or a little girl. If it was a girl, I remember thinking I’d let her be anything she wanted. Maybe I’d buy her a pony.
“Yes,” I said, slathering some butter on my toast. “I’m sure.” I could use the time to go over the accounts. There was more work to be done. Always, more work to be done.
“And you don’t mind if I take Harry?” Draco asked. He wasn’t looking at me when he said it. He’d finished his breakfast, and was fidgeting with the cutlery on our table.
“No,” I assured him. “No, of course not. Why would I mind? It’s good that you’ve got him with you. He helps with the sponsors.” One of the children had brought out a bike now, a little pink one with charmed butterflies on the handlebars. They were taking turns riding it. If I was going to teach my daughter to ride a horse, I thought to myself that we’d need a bigger backyard. The thought made me smile.
“Yes,” Draco said, interrupting my musings. His voice was low and faraway. I think he was talking to himself. “Yes, that’s why I want him with me.” I set my knife down on the table and the sound seemed to jolt him back to himself. “I mean, you know, at these events. It’s helpful that he’s supporting me.”
At the time, I didn’t understand what he was thinking, but maybe that was the moment he realised something was shifting between us. I myself did not recognise it until much later. “Sure.” I sat back in my chair.
“You know I love you,” he told me suddenly, sharply.
A door banged open and Mrs. Fletcher came out to herd the children back inside. I saw them shuffle into the lawn next door, dejected that their game had come to an end. One of the girls was wheeling her bike back inside when she saw me. Her cheeks were rosy from exertion and her stockings were coated with dust. Her hair was a deep russet brown, just like mine, and when she raised a hand to wave at me, my heart ached with longing. “Yes,” I said, watching the little girl disappear into the house. “Yes, I know.”
***
“We had the werewolf vote,” Draco said, pacing around our private study. This was after the first of the polls had come through. Harry was there too, and I learned to accept that in the way I accepted most of Draco’s decisions. “We had it. What the fuck could’ve happened in the four days since the Tewkesbury rally.”
Harry bit his lip. He got up from where he was sitting, right on the edge of the table. A pile of books threatened to topple when he moved and he hurried to steady it. The entire thing irked me, not the least because there were plenty of available chairs, but we had more important things to worry about. “Cresswell must’ve gotten to them,” I said. “We’ll need to do damage control.”
“I think I can help,” Harry said, then. He walked over and clasped Draco’s shoulder, and Draco startled, but didn’t move away. The moment seemed to stretch between them, and as I watched, I felt like an outsider looking in. “I can talk to them. I can take Teddy with me.”
I remember being shocked at that. Personally, I had no qualms against using a child to gain the sympathy werewolf vote, but I had thought Harry above such things. Not, it seemed, where Draco was concerned.
“You would do that for me?” Draco asked, and his voice was soft, reverent. He’d use that voice with me sometimes, late at night, after the exertions of the day weighed heavily on us both and we’d fall to bed, exhausted. It was jarring, hearing it out in the open like this, hearing it directed at someone else. “I know how much you hate that.” He placed a palm on Harry’s hand where it was resting on his own shoulder, and they remained like that, suspended. It was like they had forgotten about me.
“Yeah,” Harry said, after a beat. “For you, I don’t mind.”
***
Things went smoothly after that. With Harry’s support, Draco’s election to office was the biggest in constituent history. We were all so happy that day, we were ecstatic. All the hard work had finally paid off. We threw a huge party in our house to celebrate. Not one of those stuffy pureblood soirées, but a proper one. The kind with cheerful shouting that masquerades as singing, whiskey flowing like water. Everyone got properly sloshed that night, me included.
We danced together, Draco and I, and then he left me to make the rounds. I let him do it, I wanted him to get accustomed to his new role. A representative of the people. I saw him, then, from across the floor of our ballroom, taking Harry’s hand and leading him to the dance floor. It wasn’t graceful; they were tripping over each other, laughing, slapping each other on the back. So much had changed in the days since Harry had joined the campaign. We owed him so much. I was glad the two of them were getting along so well.
Whoever was in charge of music – one of Draco’s people, I can’t remember the name – changed the song just as they stepped onto the centre of the floor. The lights dimmed and the rhythm slowed until some soapy ballad began to play. It was ridiculous. I watched them stare at each other, the light shifting across their faces from the moving glow-charms above, frozen like a pair of deer trapped in headlights. I remember how much it amused me. But then Draco held out his hand to Harry, whispered something into his ear, and they both grinned at each other.
Ginny sidled up to me, then, tapping me on the shoulder. “Congratulations,” she said. Her eyes were clear and she had a glass of water in her hand. I wondered about that.
“I – thank you. I will be sure to tell Draco,” I said.
She took a sip of her water. “No,” she said. “I was congratulating you.” At my confusion, she gestured broadly to the room, adding “So this wasn’t all your doing?”
“Oh,” I said, comprehension dawning. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” I demurred, politely, but deep down in my heart I knew it to be true.
She gave me an appraising glance in return, and I wondered about that too. There was something inscrutable about her that day, something impatient. Like she knew something I didn’t and was waiting for me to work it out for myself. It left me wrong-footed, and I was floundering around for something to say, a commonality I could use in the conversation.
“Look at them go,” I said, finally, pointing to our husbands. I was laughing. “They’re having the time of their lives.” I turned back to watch them. They had their arms around each other and they were swaying in time to the music. I think it started out as a joke at first, the way they were holding each other, a parody of intimacy. They hadn’t been able to stop laughing either. But after that, it was tapering out into this kind of quiet understanding. Their faces were inches apart and their grins had turned into soft smiles. There was something familiar in the way my husband looked at Harry; I couldn’t quite place it at the time.
“Oh, Astoria,” Ginny said, raising her hand to my shoulder, brushing her fingers against the sleeve of my dress. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but then shook her head, changing her mind.
“Aren’t you going to dance?” I asked Ginny. She looked so pensive, I wanted her to be enjoying herself.
“No,” she said, smiling sadly. “I don’t think Harry wants to.”
***
There’s a photo of Draco and I that hangs by our bedside table. It’s a Muggle photo, and somehow, I like the stillness of it better. It’s almost like that’s what a picture is supposed to be, you know? The freezing of a single fluid moment in time. We look so good together in that photo, so happy. We’re in a photobooth and he’s got his arm around me. There’s a smidgen of ice-cream on my cheek and he’s trying to wipe it off. We’re both laughing, holding onto each other, and it’s so natural. No one would ever guess our marriage was a marriage of convenience.
Now, the thing about a marriage of convenience is that it’s always dry, prosaic, convenient. Most of us who find ourselves stuck in one have to watch our husbands fall in love with someone. But, if we’re particularly lucky, we get to be that someone.
For a time, I was lucky. My husband’s eyes would light up every time they fell on me, and whenever we were in public, he’d talk about me with this kind of quiet pride, this warm affection. Falling in love was easy for us both. Staying in love was, I suppose, a little bit harder.
I remember when he first told me about it. It was early in the morning, and for once, he was awake earlier than I was. The sun was up, but he hadn’t drawn back the blinds, and the room was covered in this muted half-dark. My footsteps sounded against the floor, but he didn’t turn to acknowledge me. It was then that I knew something was wrong.
“Draco?” I asked. My voice was rough with sleep, my head still cloudy. “You’re up early.” I grabbed my wand and summoned my favourite coffee mug. I was pouring the milk when I saw his face. He still wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Draco,” I said, again. “What is it?”
I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. In retrospect, I should have, I should have expected this. All the signs were there. He looked up at me, and his eyes were dark and shadowed. “I slept with Harry,” he said.
The coffee mug shattered in my hands. It must’ve made a sound as it fell, but I don’t think I registered it. The next thing I remember is the way the shards of ceramic looked on the floor, sharp and asymmetric, fragile. I’d kept that mug for so many years, nearly a decade. And now it was broken, just like that, gone in the span of a second.
I marvelled at how easy it was to break these things.
We spoke for a while after that. Or rather, he spoke and I listened. I was too shaken to move so he guided me, gently, to our living room. He sat me down on one of our sofas and wrapped a blanket around me. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t know what to say. All the while, thoughts in my head swirled, treacherous and piercing. I watched him fetch me a new cup of coffee and wondered if it was motivated by love or guilt. And then a fresh wave of pain overcame me because I realised that now I had to think about these things.
“Astoria,” he said, when he came back, handing me the coffee. “I’m sorry.” Vapours rose from the cup and when I pressed my fingers onto its surface, the heat scalded my skin. Draco sent a cooling charm my way.
“Don’t do that,” I said. I made no move to drink the coffee. It was turning stale in my hand.
“Okay,” he said, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. “Astoria, I – god, I don’t know how to do this,” he said, and then he began to talk anyway. All the things he had learned about himself, all the things he had never known he wanted. I listened to him in this kind of daze, half my mind elsewhere. I was picking apart our life and reexamining it, dissecting every word and every action through the lens of his confession.
“I love you,” he said, finally. “I don’t want to lose you.” He clasped his hands together and leaned forward. His eyes were pleading and his expression was gaunt.
“I gave you seven years of my life,” I told him, and I watched the words sink into him. “Seven years.” I needed it to hurt.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, uselessly.
We were going to have children together. A boy and a girl who had his hair and my eyes. I was going to give them everything I never had. I felt so foolish, then, planning our future in my head while he was sleeping with another man behind my back. I hated Harry, I hated him. And I know how cliché that sounds. The wife hating the lover instead of her husband. But that’s how I felt. We’d been together for seven years and I’d loved Draco fiercely through all seven of them. Love wasn’t a choice anymore, it was habit. It was so much easier to hate the person who was taking him away from me.
“Will you stop seeing him?” I asked him, and I watched his face shutter. He drew into himself, and I knew what he was going to say. My eyes traced the movement of his lips before he said the word and my ears heard it long before he opened his mouth.
“No,” he said, and there was nothing left for either of us to say.
The truth is, I do think it’s possible to love two people at once. To love one without compromising on the other. But I had dedicated my life to this man, and if it is selfish of me to expect some semblance of commitment in return, then I am selfish. I know Draco loved me, loves me still. It’s there in the way he looks at me, the way he says my name. There is anguish and yearning in his voice, but he cannot give me what I want anymore. Already, I can feel his love for me fading, turning into something dry, prosaic, convenient.
I promised myself that I would leave long before that happened.
***
So now you know what you know; and you can do with that what you will. In the meantime, I have boxes to pack, some furniture to store. Memories to erase.
I hate the way my home looks now, stripped bare. There are empty nails where pictures used to hang and dust is beginning to gather where previously there was clutter. Our coffee table stands lone in the centre of an empty room, and if I close my eyes, I can picture the way it used to look. The books and knitting needles and newspapers superimposed faintly over the wood.
At first, I wasn’t going to sell the house. It’s my house, after all. Draco and I may have bought it together but I was the one who picked out the pinch pleat curtains and the granite flooring and the bridgewater sofa set. I told him he could take the sofa set. “Keep it,” he said. “Grimmauld place is furnished.”
I thought they’d be discreet about it. If I were his campaign manager, I’d tell him that an affair is about the worst thing that can happen to an incumbent. I almost did, force of habit. But I’m done with all that now. Instead, I follow him in the papers. There are pictures of him and Harry walking closely together down the streets of Diagon Alley. Harry in his Auror robes, Draco in a slate grey suit – the one I bought for him after I told him it’d bring out his eyes. I wonder if he remembers.
They’ve dug out old pictures too. Pictures of the two of them at fundraisers, at rallies, at speeches. Always touching, hands on shoulders, heads bent together. They’d gotten away with it for so long, but no longer, it seems. Now I walk down the street and I can feel the stares, I can feel them whispering behind my back. There are questions now, tentatively sprung from this thing that the two of them refuse to hide. But soon, they will grow bolder, and soon, there will be answers to give.
“What are you doing in London, Mr. Malfoy?” a reporter asked Draco, once. I read about it in the Prophet. “I live here,” Draco had responded, and the rest of the article was a ridiculously accurate theory about what that could mean. I Incendio’d the paper as soon as I’d finished it and poured myself three fingers of whiskey. And then I fell asleep on that blasted bridgewater sofa but when I woke up, I woke up feeling worse.
“Do you love him?” I asked Harry, the last time he was here. He was fidgeting in his shoes and his hands were fisted in his pockets, but when I spoke to him, he looked up to meet my eyes.
“Yes,” he said. “More than anything. God, Astoria, I’m – I’m sorry. But I love him, I really do. I promise.”
The worst part is, I could tell that he meant it. It’s an awkward question to ask and an even more awkward one to answer, but I could hear the veracity in his voice and I could see the conviction in his eyes.
“Good,” I told him. “If he was going to leave me, I’d be insulted if it were for anything less.”
Draco came down the stairs, then, carrying a box labelled ‘books’. His hair was tied back against his head and his shirtsleeves were rolled up. He looked so handsome, he always does. At that moment, I almost hated him for it, a little bit. “I think that’s the last of it,” he said softly.
I surveyed the room, the packed cutlery and the shrunk furniture. The empty picture-frames and the bundled fabrics. All the little things that make up a marriage, boxed away into neat little packages. “Then there’s nothing left for you here,” I said, and I watched him flinch.
The air is crisp when I step outside, and the autumn leaves are looping in the wind. They crunch under the wheels of bikes as children race each other around the neighbourhood. I open the gate of my house one last time and it creaks shut behind me.
“So, how do you feel?” Ginny asks. She’s waiting for me by my front yard and her scarf is pulled tight around her neck. Too tight. I reach out to loosen it and she smiles at me.
“I’m tired,” I answer. I have other friends, people who would be here with me if I’d asked. But no one seems to understand the way Ginny does.
She nods, as if she can hear what I’m thinking, and her features soften in the low light. “It takes some getting used to,” she says.
“Thank you for doing this with me,” I tell her, and I mean it. Really, I do. I may have lost a husband but I’ve also gained a friend. It’s not the same thing, but it helps.
“It’s nothing.” She loops her arm through mine, and I like the way we fit together. “What will you do now?” she asks.
I open my mouth and I’m about to answer when the sound of laughter startles me. I turn around, chasing the source, and it’s her again. Mrs. Fletcher’s girl. It’s been months since I last saw her wheeling around the neighbourhood, but the sight is so familiar, it's like pressing play on a video that's been paused for too long. I watch the way she wobbles around on her bike, feet falling to the ground in unsteady intervals, and I don't say a word until she gets the hang of it. Soon, she’s cycling in circles like she never stopped.
I suppose some things you just don't forget.
“I don’t know,” I say, turning to Ginny. “Maybe I’ll buy a horse.”
***