Paper Wings

-Six-

The woman's eyes are dark green, resting deeply in her eye sockets. She has mousy brown hair that bounces when she walks. She wears overalls draped over a striped shirt. Everything about her seems to radiate joy, and her smile lights up her face like a lantern.

Her mouth is shaped with similarities to a heart. When she speaks her cheekbone bounce up and down. "Adelaide," the mouth says. "Welcome to Great Britain."

I manage to mumble a greeting.

Her cheerful expression never falters as she lead me to her car, an old Ford from at least the 1980s. I mean, seriously, who has a car that old?

The woman introduces herself as Valerie, oblivious to my thoughts of her car. She opens a muddy door. "Hop in," she says kindly.

Valerie walks back around the car and enters through the driver's door. As she pushes the keys into the machine, the car sputters to life, wheezing like it has asthma.

The old Ford slowly begins to move, following the cars in front of her out of the airport property.

***

When Bea said that Valerie lives on a farm, I imagine a couple acres surrounded by a fence and a couple cows or pigs, and maybe even a barn. I never imagined such a huge plot of land.

Valerie noticed my starstruck gaze and said, "It's a beauty, isn't it? Our farm is about thirty acres if you count the forest in the back."

Wow, I think. "Did you plant all of that?" I ask, gesturing to the greens seeping lavishly along the rich soil.

"Sure did, with the help of Emmet, who you'll meet soon enough."

"Who's Emmet?" I question.

"You'll see," she says. We turn a corner of the long driveway, exposing a huge field of corn next to a fenced in barn. On the other side of the fence, horses in every colour I can imagine graze on the tall grass growing from the ground.

"You have horses?" I ask.

"And pigs and cows and chickens."

I reply with, "What are their names?"

"The horses or the chickens?" She asks me.

"The horses," I say quietly.

"Bernard is the oldest; he's been here since Harvey was born. Maggie is the black one, she has two foals called Crackers and Sunshine. Then we have Cheddar, who's probably the sweetest of them all. She's going to give birth soon, we expect."

I smile and the car comes to a stop in front of a small farmhouse with a wraparound porch.

Chelsea would love this, I think, and my smile falters. "Don't cry," I whisper. "She wouldn't want you to cry."

"You okay, Adelaide?" Valerie asks as we climb out of the car.

"Fine," I say, and I force a grin.

"Good, good," she grins for real and I follow her into the farmhouse.

There's a small kitchen with a wood stove. The dining table rests close to the window, surrounded by four three-legged stools.

As we enter through another door, I see a small couch and a coffee table. There's two doors on one wall the are propped open, revealing two small bedrooms.

On the opposite wall lies a spiral staircase, ascending up to the second floor. I look at Valerie.
She nods.

"You can go up there. It's only the attic, but it looks nice now. It's where you'll be sleeping until Harvey goes away," she says.

"Who's Harvey?" I ask curiously.

"Harvey's my son. He's going back to the university in a couple days for his sophomore year, so he'll be staying in a dorm in London. He's almost twenty years old."

Since Bea and Valerie are the same age, and me being thirteen, I was born when Bea was twenty two, that would mean Valerie had a baby when she was fifteen years old. My eyes widen.

Trying not to show Valerie I've noticed, I climb the spiral staircase to the attic.

It's a small room with a low roof. Opposite end of the roof are flat and upright, shaped like triangles for the right and left sides of the roof to rest on top of it making a long pointed roof. One of the flat walls has a metal post twin size bed with a round window above it. I walk over to it, looking at the view of the farm. Behind the house there are rolling hills, cows standing amongst the closer ones. If you look farther than that, you can see the outline of hundreds of trees fading into the distance.

"Chelsea," I whisper. "I wish you were here. You would love this place. It's beautiful, and their are loads of animals with such sweet names. It hasn't snowed yet, but I bet it would be beautiful if it did." I gasp and look away. I'm sorry.