The River's Current

The porch light flickered on, flooding the steps in a weirdly intimate glow, and Andy’s heart tripped over itself. It was early, and the sky was barely lit by the rising sun. He’d knocked maybe half a dozen times on this door in the last sixteen years, and each time the memory felt newer than the actual wood and paint—he remembered it as the portal to a world that never quite fit him, but somehow still claimed all his raw edges. Tonight it was simply real.

The snow had started up again, flakes spinning in the halo of the light, painting the old brick steps with a film of bright, wet white.

He glanced at Laura. She stood one step behind, like she was counting on the porch itself to keep her upright, her feet sunk into the drift. She had managed to merge back into a single body—no shadow self, no odd twin, just her, fragile as if assembled from the memory of a photograph and nothing else.

The white dress she wore looked almost ceremonial in the porch light, too thin for winter, too bright for this street. Her hair was damp at the ends, blue-black in the light, and her face was turned just enough that the porch camera wouldn’t catch it. She held onto his hand as if afraid she’d float away otherwise. She didn’t seem to notice the cold. Neither of them did. The island’s strange generosity held steady in their blood.

Laura had angled her body slightly away from the door, chin lowered, hair falling forward. Not hiding exactly, just controlling the angle. She held onto his hand as if anchoring herself to the present.

Andy almost turned around and left. For one frantic second, he thought about hauling Laura back to the footbridge, or to any of the dozen places where grief belonged but people didn’t. But he’d come this far, and if he’d learned anything on the island, it was that nothing ever hurt less by waiting.

The deadbolt clicked, loud enough to make Andy’s pulse spike, and the door swung open.

His mother appeared, framed by the same yellow light that had always made her look a little older than she was. She wore a navy robe over pajamas, her hair pinned back in the same way it had been since the day Andy was born, and in the second before she recognized him, her face was flat with irritation—a mom look so old it could have been carbon-dated.

Then she saw Andy, and her whole body unlocked. “Oh, sweet Lord. Andrew! You’re alive.”

She said it like it wasn’t a joke, or if it was, it was the kind that only revealed itself on the third or fourth retelling. Andy opened his mouth, then closed it, then managed a smile. “Hey, Mom.”

She surged forward, arms wide, nearly knocking him off the step. “You didn’t call for two days! After the sale—I figured you’d be celebrating with your new bosses, or maybe stuck at O’Hare again, but you don’t answer a single text and suddenly I’m on the phone with the sheriff—” She broke off, catching sight of Laura, and the next sentence died in her throat.

Laura looked at her feet.

Andy’s mother recovered in half a second, clearly not recognizing her. “Oh, for Pete’s sake, look at you two. You’re both frozen. Come inside right this instant.” She opened the door wider, stepping back with all the practiced efficiency of someone who’d run more than a few sleepovers in her day. She gestured Andy through, then Laura, her eyes darting to the stranger’s face and then away, a mother’s discretion in overdrive.

Andy herded Laura over the threshold, not sure who was shaking harder. The house was warm—oppressively so after the chill—and smelled like lemon Lysol and something yeasty, maybe rising dough from the next day’s bread. The mudroom was exactly the same, right down to the battered rack of snow boots and the windbreaker Andy had last worn in high school, still hanging by the door. His mother disappeared for a second, then returned with a stack of fleece blankets, tossing one around Andy’s shoulders and the other around Laura’s.

She paused, frowning at the thin white dress Laura wore, then at Andy’s button-down shirt. “Are you both insane? It’s negative two degrees out. Andrew, are you trying to get pneumonia? And you—” She turned to Laura, offering the blanket with a tentative smile. “I hope you’re not from California, because it only gets worse from here.”

Laura accepted the blanket, wrapping it tight around herself and pressing back into the wall, keeping her face angled just enough that her eyes stayed in shadow.

Andy cleared his throat. “Sorry, Mom. It was… spontaneous. A trip. We didn’t really plan for the weather.”

She snorted, but didn’t press. “Well, you’re here now. I was just about to make tea. Do you want cocoa instead? Or maybe something stronger?” She started down the hall without waiting for an answer, calling over her shoulder, “Your father’s already up, he’s in the den—he doesn’t believe in sleep anymore. And you, Andrew, you look like you haven’t slept in a week.”

He led Laura down the hall, the carpet as ugly as ever but still so soft it felt like walking on memory foam. He could hear the TV from the den, some antique crime show rerun, and the steady squeak of his father's old La-Z-Boy shifting with every commercial break.

They passed the kitchen. Laura slowed, peeking through the archway. His mother glanced up from the stove where she was rummaging for mugs.

"My goodness, Andrew," she said, looking him over, pausing with a mug in hand, "you've filled out. Put on some muscle." Her eyes narrowed appraisingly. "Are you taller? You look a little taller."

"Just been hitting the gym," Andy mumbled, rolling his shoulders slightly. The new height and strength from the island's Gifts still felt foreign on his frame.

Laura's hand tightened in his. The sight of the kitchen—the battered yellow tile counters, the familiar domesticity—hit Andy with unexpected ****. He wondered if Laura saw the same memories: the Thanksgiving with six helpings of turkey, or when she'd spilled lemonade and his mother had just laughed and mopped it up. No lecture, no anger. The kind of home Laura had never really had.

The den was exactly as he remembered: paneling, too many lamps, the smell of old books and pipe tobacco (even though his father had quit years ago). The TV glared silently from the far corner, the glow outlining his father’s profile in sharp, aquiline lines. He looked up as Andy entered, and for a moment, the old man’s face was pure calculation, the way it always got when he was trying to predict the punchline of an unfinished story.

Then recognition dawned, and he grinned. “Andrew. Jesus, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”

He rose, all six-foot-four and rail-thin, and pulled Andy into a hug. Halfway through, he stiffened, stepping back with his hands on Andy's shoulders. "Hold on. Are you taller than me now?"

Andy felt a cold flush of panic. "Just better posture, Dad. Physical therapist at work said I was slouching too much."

"Huh." His father's eyes narrowed, measuring. "Could've sworn we were eye-to-eye at Christmas." He shook his head, patting Andy's arm. "Your mother thought you were dead, you know."

Andy grinned, “Not yet.”

His father let go, mouth open to perhaps press the point about Andy’s height, then noticed Laura. He looked her up and down, taking in the blanket, the way she’d shifted to put Andy between them, the way she hadn’t lifted her chin.

His brow furrowed. “And who’s this?”

Andy hesitated, but before he could answer, his mother bustled in, carrying two mugs of cocoa and a cup of tea balanced expertly in one hand. “I don’t want to interrupt,” she said, “but you’re both shivering. Sit, please.” She set the tray down on the coffee table, then perched on the edge of the couch, her gaze flicking between Andy and Laura, curious, polite, and totally unprepared.

Andy sat on the couch, Laura next to him, and realized for the first time that the furniture was built for three. Not four. That fourth spot Laura had just claimed—opposite the TV, back to the window—had always been Laura's when she came over after school. He wondered if his parents noticed the symmetry, or if it was just him.

His mother took the armchair, and his father settled into the La-Z-Boy with a groan. “Well,” his father said, “I guess we’re all here.”

Andy glanced at Laura, who had drawn her knees up and tucked her hands between them.

He cleared his throat. “So, this is going to sound insane, but I need you both to listen all the way through before you say anything.”

His parents exchanged a look. The one that meant “let’s humor him and see how deep he digs his own grave.”

Andy pressed ahead. “A few months ago, I was—recruited, basically—to participate in a reality show. It wasn’t public, or televised, or anything like that. More like… experimental. The idea was to isolate a bunch of people on an island, put them through a lot of weird games and challenges, and see what happened.”

His mother’s face twisted, half incredulous, half worried. “Why would you ever sign up for something like that? And why didn’t you tell us?”

Andy shrugged, “I couldn’t. NDAs, secrecy, the whole thing. Plus, I didn’t know what I was getting into.”

His father’s eyebrows went up. “Is this why you went dark for a while? We got your texts, but you never FaceTimed.”

Andy nodded. The sale of Aural had devoured his time, but at least it provided a convenient cover for the truth. “Yeah. The show ran even during the Aural sale. That’s why I didn’t come home.”

There was a silence. His father leaned forward, elbows on knees. “What was the point of it all?”

Andy hesitated, then said, “It was supposed to be about love. About what you’d do for the people you loved.”

His mother softened a little. “You met her there?”

He blinked, caught off guard. “What?”

She gestured with her mug, a sly half-smile creeping in. “You keep looking at her like you’re afraid she’ll vanish if you blink. I just figured…” She shrugged, letting the implication hang.

Andy coughed, trying not to look at Laura. “Yeah. Something like that.”

His mother’s eyes danced. “Well, she’s beautiful, Andrew. But you still haven’t introduced her properly. I thought we raised you better than that.”

Laura winced at the word “beautiful,” but said nothing. Her fingers tightened on the blanket. Andy felt his face heat up. “Sorry, Mom. It’s just—this wasn’t planned. I didn’t expect to be home. Or to bring her.”

His father grunted. “So you’re seeing each other? Is this serious?”

Andy swallowed. “Yeah. But… it’s complicated.”

There was another silence. His mother stared at Laura, and for the first time, Andy saw the question in her face. Not suspicion, exactly, but a searching, an effort to pin down what about this girl was familiar. Laura must have felt it too, because she looked away, eyes fixed on the chessboard.

Andy **** himself to keep going. “It’s not just her. There are… others. It’s part of the show. You’re supposed to, uh, date a lot of people. At once.”

He braced for a reaction, but his parents just looked at each other, then back at him. His mother said, “Well, I’m glad you’re getting out there,” which broke the tension for half a second, and even his father chuckled.

There was a pause, the kind of silence that demands the truth. His mother took a sip of cocoa, her eyes never leaving Laura. His father watched Andy, waiting for the next move.

Andy steadied himself. “There’s more to it than that,” he said, his voice pitched low, almost conspiratorial. “The show wasn’t really about love. I mean, it was, but not in the way you think. It was about memory. About the past, and unfinished things.”

His father lifted his chin. “They put you in with people you already knew?”

Andy nodded. “Some of them. Others, not so much. But it’s complicated. It made me think about everything. About the river. About Laura.”

At the name, his mother went rigid. She set her mug down, hard enough that a little of the cocoa sloshed onto the table.

“I’m glad you finally want to talk about her,” she said, voice brittle. “Sixteen years is a long time to keep pretending it didn’t happen.”

Andy glanced at Laura. She’d gone very still, her knees clamped tight and her hands buried in the fleece. The light from the den caught the impossible blue of her eyes, the sharp, L-shaped scar on her jaw, just visible now that her hair had dried and shifted back. His mother’s gaze snagged on her, stilled for a moment.

“I know,” Andy said. “But that’s the thing. The show—The HH, it’s called—isn’t what it looks like. It does something to people. Changes them.”

His mother bristled, her attention shifting back to Andy. “What are you talking about? ****?”

He almost laughed. “No. Not ****. It’s…” He stopped, searching for the right phrase, then gave up. “Just let me finish, okay? What I’m about to say is going to sound insane, but I need you to believe me. Even if it’s just for five minutes.”

His parents exchanged another look. This one said, “Should we be worried?”

Andy pressed on. “It’s not just a show. The place—The HH—is like a… I don’t even know. A bubble? It pulls people in, and when you’re there, things happen that shouldn’t. People change. Old wounds—literal and metaphorical—get fixed. Some people lose things. Others get them back.”

He saw his mother’s eyes flick to Laura again, searching her face.

“I lost time,” Andy said. “I lost years I should have had with Laura. But at The HH, you can get things back. Even things you thought were gone forever.”

Laura drew a breath, sharp and silent. Andy reached for her hand, squeezing it. She gripped back, knuckles white through the blanket.

His mother frowned. “Andrew, what are you saying?”

He turned to Laura, nodding. “Do you want to—?”

Laura looked up, then over at his parents. The moment the room’s light hit her full-on, highlighted her impossible blue eyes, the little scar, Andy saw something shift in his mother’s face—a flicker of confusion, then disbelief, then the cold, paralyzing recognition that precedes a scream.

“Hi Mrs. Cooper, Mr. Cooper,” Laura said. Her voice was soft, small, but unmistakable.

Andy’s mother dropped her mug. It hit the rug and rolled, cocoa bleeding into the fibers. She didn’t even look down. She stared at Laura as if she’d never seen a human being before, her hands pressed together in her lap like a prayer she’d forgotten the words to.

His father’s mouth hung open. “No,” he said, voice flat. “No, that’s impossible.”

Laura smiled, just a little, the way she used to when she was scared and pretending she wasn’t. “It’s really me,” she said. “I know it doesn’t make sense.”

For a second, nobody moved. Andy’s mother put her hand to her own cheek, as if to check for a pulse, then whispered, “Laura?” like a curse or a benediction.

Laura nodded, eyes shining. “It’s me. I’m… I’m back.”

Andy’s father stood, the old joints cracking, and crossed the room in three long strides. He hovered over Laura, not touching her, just staring at her face with a look so raw it was almost violent. “We buried you,” he said, voice breaking on the last word.

Laura looked up, eyes bright. “I know. I’m sorry.” She didn’t look away. It was the apology of a girl who still believed she had caused something she hadn’t.

He reached out, trembling, and touched her shoulder—light as a feather, afraid she would vanish again if he pressed too hard. When she didn’t disappear, he exhaled, his knees buckled, and he sank down onto the carpet, hands covering his face.

His mother was next. She didn’t let herself pause to weigh the strangeness or the etiquette of the moment. She just moved, arms outstretched, the way she had when Andy was a child and came home from a disaster at school, or a fever that knocked him out for days, or the time he cut his palm open on a broken snow globe and bled all over the kitchen tiles. The hug was awkward—Laura half-standing, half-collapsing, her knees still tangled in the blanket and her body stoic with shock. But it didn’t matter. Andy’s mother drew Laura in, her hands clutching Laura’s back like she’d spent every hour of sixteen years regretting all the hugs she hadn’t delivered, all the times she’d sent Laura home with just a kiss and a wave and a stern, “Get some sleep, and make sure to eat something.”

And then she sobbed. Huge, racking breaths that seemed to collapse her chest inward, that left her forehead pressed to Laura’s scalp, that leaked tears into Laura’s hair with reckless abandon. The room shrank to a single nexus of pain and relief. Andy watched it happen, spellbound, clutching Laura’s hand because he needed the anchor as much as he suspected she did. He noticed, distantly, that his own eyes were wet, and that his father’s mouth was working in silence, as if he was fighting to keep his voice from breaking in front of everyone.

They stayed like that for a long time. The clock on the mantel ticked an entire minute, then two, then five, and nobody said a word. Laura didn’t so much return the hug as hold still and let herself be held, as if she believed that any sudden motion would wake them all from a fragile, collective dream.

Eventually, Laura peeled herself back with surprising gentleness, as if she’d practiced the maneuver for years. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice tiny and hoarse. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Or to—” She seemed to lose her thread, and shrugged, the gesture as small as a breath.

Andy’s mother wiped her face on the back of her sleeve. The motion was brisk, almost careless, as if getting the tears out of the way would allow her to focus on the business at hand. “You don’t have to be sorry,” she said, and Andy was startled by the steel in her voice. “You don’t have to be sorry for anything. Not ever.”

Andy’s father had, at some point, sat back on his heels. He was looking at Laura with a species of disbelief Andy had never seen before—part scientific scrutiny, part terrified wonder. “How is this even possible?” he said. “You were dead. We saw the—” He looked at Andy, eyes wide and slightly wild, as if searching for a collaborator in the world’s most elaborate gaslighting. “Did you know?”

Andy shook his head, slow and emphatic. “Not until I saw her. The show brought her back. Or something did. We’re still figuring it out. I don’t fully understand it either.”

His father looked at Laura again, scanning her face as if searching for clues to the magic trick. “You’re older,” he said, and the way he said it made it clear that the thought had only now landed, as if the brain needed a minute to synchronize itself with the evidence of the eyes.

Laura laughed, a sound so thin and brittle it nearly disappeared before it reached the air. “I missed a few years,” she said.

Andy’s mother, who still hadn’t quite relinquished her grip on Laura’s hand, dabbed her face with a tissue from the end table. She regarded Laura with unabashed awe. “You look beautiful. Even more than I remembered.” There was no envy in the statement, only a kind of reverence, the way a botanist might address the world’s last remaining orchid.

Laura offered a ghost of a smile. “Thank you. I’m not used to… this. Any of this.”

Every so often, Andy’s mother would glance over at Andy, as if to confirm he was seeing what she saw, that this was not a shared hallucination or the world’s cruelest prank. Andy could only nod, unsure if his muscles would obey anything else.

The silence that followed was not the kind that begged to be filled. It felt like the necessary absence of noise after a concussion, like the world was waiting for its own shellshock to subside before allowing itself to move forward. Wind rattled the windowpane, and a fat bead of condensation rolled down the glass and broke on the sill.

After a long while, Andy’s mother inhaled, squared her shoulders, and said, “Are you hungry? Do you want something to eat?” The words were a reflex, the way every question about food was in their house—a simple, primal offering of love in the language of carbohydrates and sodium.

Laura’s face went pink. “Not really. But thank you,” she said.

His mother patted her hand, as if feeding her was the only plausible next step, the only way to assure herself this wasn’t a mirage about to vanish with the next blink. “You used to hate breakfast,” she said. “I remember that. You always slid the eggs onto Andy’s plate when you thought I wasn’t looking.”

Laura’s lips parted in genuine shock. “You remember?”

His mother smiled, sad and sweet. “We loved you, Laura. You were the daughter we never had. You know that, right?”

Laura nodded. Her throat flexed once before she managed to speak. “I know now,” she said. Both hands clutched the blanket so tightly that her knuckles stood out like bone-white marbles.

Andy watched all of this unfold—his mother’s awe, his father’s shaken rigor, Laura’s **** delight at being recognized and wanted—and realized that something was being repaired in real time, something he hadn’t even noticed was broken until it started knitting itself back together right in front of him. Something he’d always assumed had died along with Laura, or at least calcified into a kind of brittle self-protection. The living room felt different already—a room that, for most of Andy’s life, had contained at least one ghost, one palpable absence, now felt as if it was being exorcised by the presence of the girl who was supposed to haunt it.

They sat like that, the five of them—Andy, Laura, Mom, Dad, and the afterimage of the girl who had drowned but somehow made it back—until the wind outside picked up into a howl and the furnace groaned as it kicked into life. Conversation ricocheted between awkward and intimate, landing in strange places, as if everyone was trying to test the limits of what was now possible. Andy’s mother interrogated Laura on every detail she could think of—her favorite color, the classes she’d taken, whether she still hated capers and olives, whether she’d kept up with her reading and whether she remembered that time she and Andy built a treehouse in the neighbor’s pine. (“Still there,” said Andy’s father. “Trashed, but still standing.”) Laura answered every question with a mixture of delighted embarrassment and something heavier, like she was grateful for every tiny fact the world let her claim as her own.

Andy’s father prodded at the miracle with gentle skepticism, as if afraid that too much scrutiny would cause the whole thing to evaporate. “Where were you,” he asked, voice quiet, “all this time?”

Laura shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s like I blinked and it was now, and I was in a bed, in the place Andy mentioned.” She looked at Andy, her eyes asking permission to keep going. He nodded, and she continued. “It was like waking up. But nobody told me where I’d been sleeping.”

His parents exchanged a look so complicated it was almost impossible to read. It was the look of people who had spent half a lifetime making peace with the unacceptable, only to have the universe reverse its ruling with a shrug. Andy’s father said, “I can’t believe this” at least six more times. Each time, it sounded less like a complaint and more like a prayer.

Andy looked at his parents—at the wonder, the fear, the raw, open hope on their faces—and wondered how he’d ever survived sixteen years without this. He hadn’t. Not really. He wondered if Laura’s resurrection had also brought back something in them, something he hadn’t realized was missing until it was right in front of him, alive and shivering on their couch.

They found their way back to the living room, a more comfortable place for confessions, the heat turned up high, the house now thick with the scent of cinnamon and baking dough. Andy’s mother returned with a tray of steaming mugs. She passed one to Andy, one to Laura, and took the armchair with the third. Laura cupped her mug with both hands, as if afraid she’d drop it, or as if she needed something solid to hold.

The four of them sat in a rough circle, feet tucked under throw blankets, eyes flicking from one face to another. Andy’s father cleared his throat once, then again, but it was his mother who finally broke the silence.

“I keep thinking you’re a dream,” she said, voice shaky but bright. “I keep thinking if I blink, you’ll be gone again.”

Laura smiled, her eyes shiny in the lamplight. “I thought the same, at first. I kept thinking someone would wake me up, and I’d be back to… before.”

Back to thirteen. Back to the river.

His mother reached over, dropping three little marshmallows into Laura’s cocoa. She gave a conspiratorial smile. “You still take it with the marshmallows, don’t you?”

For a long second, Laura stared at the floating white islands, her face gone soft and childlike. She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Andy watched her swallow hard, fighting down a sob.

His father leaned in, elbows on his knees, trying not to stare but failing. “So,” he said, “you remember everything? It’s really you in there?”

Laura hesitated, then nodded. “Most of it. I remember… the end. The water. The pain. But I also remember you. All of you. The smell of the old porch swing. The way Andy used to sneak cookies before dinner. The time your cat had kittens in the linen closet.” She shook her head, smiling at the memory. “I remember it all.”

His father blinked, slow and deliberate. “I just—I never thought I’d see you again. I don’t know if I should be afraid or grateful or what.”

Andy’s mother reached for Laura’s hand, her fingers trembling. “You’re here. That’s all that matters.”

They sat for a while, the only sound the hiss of the furnace and the occasional ping from the oven as the cinnamon rolls baked.

Laura’s eyes kept drifting to the walls, to the framed photos lining the mantle. Most of them were of Andy—awkward school portraits, band concerts, the ill-fated attempt at Little League—but a handful were of Laura herself, snapped during the endless sleepovers and backyard picnics of childhood. They had never taken her down. She looked at each one carefully, as if memorizing proof of her own existence, then returned her gaze to the cocoa.

She cleared her throat. “What happened to my parents?” she asked, voice very small.

Andy’s mother squeezed her hand. “They left town a few years after your… after the funeral. Nobody heard from them again. Not even a forwarding address. We asked, and we searched, but there was nothing.” She gave a sad smile. “I think they wanted to forget, but it’s impossible, isn’t it?”

Laura looked away. “I don’t know about that.”

“You were always here,” Andy’s mother said, softly. “You were family, Laura. You still are. That never changed.”

Andy shifted on the couch, feeling the weight of sixteen years stretch and then melt away between them. He caught the scent of cinnamon again, the strength of it filling the house in a way that was both comforting and unreal. His father sat beside Laura, elbows on his knees, peering at her as though he could will some scientific rationale into the universe for what was happening. Andy wondered if the man was waiting for some clue—a slip, a glitch, some evidence Laura was a clone, a double, a very sophisticated hallucination. But there was nothing. Laura was just…Laura, right down to the subtle way she bit her lip when nervous, or the way her eyes darted to the window every time a snowflake hit the pane.

Andy’s father reached over, touched Laura’s arm as though testing to see if she was warm-blooded or spirit. “That’s why Andy bought the house next door. He couldn’t stand the thought of it belonging to strangers. He planted all sorts of flowers there. He turned it into a garden for you.”

Laura’s eyes flicked to Andy, and something in her face softened. The guardedness of the last hour faded, replaced with an almost shy gratitude.

Andy’s mother smiled, the lines of worry still etched into her cheeks but now filled with a warmth that made Andy’s lungs ache. “That garden is still there,” she said. “Even in winter, you can see where the snow lies thinner over the beds.”

The room filled with a kind of contented silence, the kind that follows the breaking of a fever. Laura took another sip of cocoa, found her marshmallows dissolved, and licked the sweet from her lip. Beside her, Andy let himself lean just a fraction closer, enough that her shoulder met his without either of them having to make a decision about it.

His mother smiled. “So, this place you were at—The HH. It really brought you back?”

Laura considered the question with a care that seemed almost mathematical. “It did,” she said, after a few moments. “I dont’t know how, but it’s not like anything I’ve ever seen. I’m still not sure if it’s real, or some sort of magic, or a dream I got stuck in. But it’s… kind.” She paused. “**** than I expected.”

Andy’s father grunted, and it might have been skepticism or simply awe. “It’s magic, then?” he said, the word sounding foolish in his mouth, too small and too childish for the man who’d prided himself on never believing in anything.

Laura smiled, and the old Laura came back for a heartbeat. “If you want to call it that. It feels more like myth.”

Andy’s father eyed Andy, as if seeing him for the first time in years. “And you’re—what, dating several women now?” he said, voice as neutral as if asking about stocks. “Is that how it works these days?”

Andy’s face went red. The question was a fist to the gut, but also a relief; if his father was asking about logistics, the existential portion of the evening was apparently over. “It’s… complicated,” he managed.

Laura giggled, covering her mouth with her hand. “It is.”

Andy’s mother raised an eyebrow. “Does that bother you, Laura?”

Laura’s smile faded, but she didn’t look away. “It did,” she admitted. “At first, I was furious. Like I’d been erased, even though I was the one who…you know.” She glanced at the floor, her hands twisting in her lap. “But the other women—they’re not what I expected. They really care about Andy. And they helped Andy bring me back. I wouldn’t be here without them.”

She said it without any malice, her voice so even and measured it could have been a weather report. Andy looked at her, surprised, and proud. She had almost broken, two weeks ago, when she had first learned about the harem. Now… He squeezed her hand in gratitude, and she squeezed back.

His mother grinned. “You always did want a big family,” she said to Laura, a memory riding the words. “Even when you were little, you’d drag Andy everywhere. I remember when you made him build a fort in our basement, called it the ‘Cooper-Ashford Fortress’ and then refused to let us clean it up.”

Andy tried to look affronted. “It was a good fort.”

His mother laughed, the sound filling the room like sunlight. “It lasted almost a year, until you burned a hole in the carpet trying to make soup.”

Laura giggled again, this time with no embarrassment at all. “I remember that. We almost had to call the firefighters.”

Andy’s father smiled, just a little. “I’m just glad you’re home.”

Laura looked at him and nodded, pressing her cheek against Andy’s shoulder. “Me too,” she said, and the words were so simple and so true that Andy felt himself near tears again, for the thousandth time that night.

The four of them sat, watching as the snow outside thickened. On the mantle, the leftover Christmas lights his father always refused to take off until mid-Spring blinked red and gold, casting Laura’s face in shifting halos. Andy’s mother vanished into the kitchen, and came back with a tray of cinnamon rolls, gooey and steaming, the smell so sweet and nostalgic it nearly undid Andy.

She set the tray in front of Laura, then Andy, then her husband. “Eat,” she commanded, “before you make me cry again.”

Laura took one and bit in, the icing streaking her lip. She laughed, and the sound was so familiar—so perfectly, achingly Laura—that for a split second Andy worried he might be hallucinating, that if he blinked, he’d be alone in the room and the world would be as gray as it had always been.

But the warmth of Laura at his side, the hot cinnamon on his tongue, the quiet joy on his parents’ faces—none of it faded. If anything, the reality of it grew sharper, more real, as the minutes ticked by.

Andy’s parents watched Laura eat, watched her laugh, watched her wipe her hands on the blanket and grin at Andy as if nothing in the world could ever go wrong again. And with each minute, they seemed to believe a little more that she was real, that she was really here. Andy could see the questions in their eyes—where had she been, what had she seen, did she remember everything?—but none of it mattered, not right then.

When Laura finished, she leaned back, content and drowsy. “I could stay like this forever,” she said, eyes closed.

Andy grinned. “You can, if you want.”

She smiled, dreamy. “I do.” The words hung there, fragile.

His mother put her hand over Laura’s, the gesture as natural as breathing. “You’re safe here,” she said, her voice full of love. “You always were.”

They talked, the conversation winding from the small to the cosmic and back again. Laura answered every question with care, sometimes pausing as if to check her own memory, sometimes laughing at things Andy had long forgotten. The cinnamon rolls went quickly, replaced by fruit and crackers and, eventually, a pot of chicken noodle soup Andy’s mother insisted was “good for the soul.”

After lunch, Andy excused himself—“just for a minute,” he said, catching Laura’s eye and squeezing her hand. “Don’t let them spoil you too much while I’m gone.”

She smiled, but her grip lingered on his fingers, as if afraid to let him out of sight.

Andy padded upstairs, past the closed doors of old bedrooms. He could hear his parents’ voices drifting from the kitchen below, low and full of disbelief, sometimes spiking in joy or breaking into the hush of remembered grief. Laura’s laughter burbled up between, and every time he heard it, it sounded more like home. Reminded him of what home had been, before her ****.

He found what he was looking for in the back of his closet, behind the boxes of college textbooks and the forgotten trophies. The case was battered, black with peeling stickers and a handle that had always threatened to come off. He opened it, checking the strings and the old setlist tucked in the front pocket, and then he brought the guitar downstairs.

When he walked in, Laura’s face lit up. “You still have it?” she said, softly, as if she didn’t quite believe it.

He nodded, smiling. “You remember when I bought it?”

She giggled. “You made me listen to every chord you learned. I thought your parents were going to kill us both.”

Andy’s mother grinned, her eyes red but shining. “It was the sweetest **** in the world,” she said. “You two never did anything halfway.”

He strummed the guitar, the sound familiar and imperfect. “I thought maybe—before we go, we could make some music. Like old times.”

His parents exchanged a look, and his mother said, “Go where?” The question hovered, fragile.

Andy set the guitar down, looked at Laura, then at his parents. “We don’t know how long we’ll be here,” he said. “It’s… probably temporary, this time. But there’s one thing I need to do. For both of us.”

His father looked at him. “The footbridge?”

Andy nodded. “Yeah. The footbridge.”

There was a silence, but it wasn’t sad. His mother hugged Laura again, held her close, then pulled back to look at her face one more time. “Be safe,” she said. “And come back. You always have a place here.”

Laura blinked, a tear rolling down her cheek. “Thank you,” she said, “For everything.”

Andy grabbed his coat, slung the guitar over his shoulder, put a coat on Laura, and took her hand.

They stepped out into the night, the snow falling thick and silent. The porch light was still on, but it no longer felt like a warning; it felt like a beacon, guiding them to the place where everything had once come apart, and maybe, could be put back together.

They walked through the blue shadow of the trees, across the familiar streets, toward the bridge where the whole world had changed. The night was cold, but their hands were warm.

And for the first time since they were children, Andy and Laura walked together on the streets where they had played, not chasing something, not running from something, just walking toward it.