“Yeah. You needed a good friend to spell that stuff out to you.”

“Yes. Yes, I know I did.”

Becky nodded. “Well, you need a good friend right now to tell you what a dick you’ve been for not knowing how much like a brother you are to me. That’s why it hurts so bad.”

“Becky, I’m so—”

“And do you know how I know that?”

“No,” said Peter quietly. “No, I don’t.”

“Because I love you as much as I hate you.”

And it was true. In a way, what they shared was even stronger than if they’d just been brother and sister. They had each other because they had chosen each other.

Peter got down next to her, swinging his legs over the edge of the rock. “It’s just that you’ll be able to understand parts of Cooper now that I never will,” he said. “And share things with him that I’ll never know.”

Becky shrugged. “And you share something far deeper with him that will never match any of that.”

Peter drew a deep sigh into his chest and watched a bird take flight over the forest, the beat of its grey wings fleeting across the forest’s snowy spires. And he wondered if Becky might yearn for someone of her own.

The two of them sat for a while without either one of them feeling the need to say much, when sunlight dipped behind the clouds, dulling the snow of its glitter. Becky stood, and the red light spluttered, much brighter now. The sky grew darker and the light burned, hot and fizzing, like a branding iron over the treetops. It was only now that Peter noticed the neon sign.

Coca-Cola ™

Proudly Sponsors Your Welcome Home

For a moment, he thought he must’ve lost his bearings or that the hills had somehow double backed on themselves so he was looking back down over West Wranglestone. The sign was exactly the same. Peter stood, walking further along the bluff to clear some trees blocking the view below. There was another Mainstreet. It stretched out beneath rows of crisscrossing fairy lights with the same little red-brick houses down either side. Towards the middle of the street, a neon cowboy above the Old Western Outfitters store stood frozen mid-pose, caught in the act of doffing his Stetson and waving it. There was the movie theatre, too. It was the exact same town, but not the same at all. This town was dark.

The red Coca-Cola sign spluttered again, but some of the letters had broken away and swung dully from the hoarding on frosted cables. The town was mostly buried beneath a thick crust of snow. It had been abandoned so long ago that it had the appearance of being dusty, like a shoebox full of special things left forgotten beneath the bed.

“I don’t understand,” said Peter. “What is that place?”