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The story starts like this: there is a girl. Well technically she is a woman, but it hardly feels like that most days. Most days she still looks around and wonders if she’ll understand the world better when she grows up. Wonders if she’ll feel less lost. And then she remembers that she is an adult and she wonders if everyone else feels the same way.
So when she tells her story, it starts like this: there was a girl and she wasn’t the smartest or the richest or the most beautiful, but she certainly was the most stubborn, which can get you pretty far if you’re willing to work hard. The girl was called Jack and it wasn’t short for anything. If anyone asked, she would tell them it was short for Jacqueline or it was a nickname for Jillian (Jack and Jill went up the hill) or any other story she could think of. But in the end, it was as simple as the fact her mother had liked the name. It would have made her father smile, she’d been told, if he had survived long enough to see her born. And it was a practical, hard-working name for a practical hard-working girl, just like her mother. And it was true, itt suited her.
There was a girl and there was a city. The city was a teeming maze of people and buildings. Everywhere there was something new to see, some new food to try. And everywhere there were people, each with their own secrets and dreams and desires. It was as beautiful and exciting as it was isolating. There was so much going on, it was easy to get lost in the tide of it and not even make time to get to know your neighbors. It was everything Jack had dreamed about, manning the counter at her mother’s bakery, able to name every patron who came in and the order they were there to pick up. And at the same time, when she lay in her bed at night, she sometimes missed the quiet of the village and being able to greet everyone she saw on the street.
Some time after Jack had turned 16, she had started to think much more seriously about what she wanted to do with her life and realized that she wanted more than to take over the bakery her mother ran. She’d always been good with words and numbers and people, so when a traveling magister through their village, she’d seen an opportunity. And he’d apparently also seen something in her because by the time he was getting ready to move on to the next village, he gave her a letter of recommendation for an apprenticeship to his colleague in London.
The apprenticeship was hard. It was harder than Jack had thought it could be. Here, she wasn’t Ailene’s daughter, with a gift for numbers and letters, which no one could quite understand where she’d gotten it from. Here, she was just one student in a pool of the best and brightest from all the villages. And, as it turned out, hardly the most talented of the lot. But the stubbornness that had gotten her this far, meant she wasn’t ready to quit at the first sign of trouble. So she put her head down, squared her shoulders, and dug her heels in.
Before she knew it, a year had passed. And then a second. The city which had once seemed so loud and alien became familiar. Jack formed her own routines and community. She learned which of her classmates were kind and would help her study and which were selfish or cruel. She found a job to support herself and buy things beyond the uniform and room provided by the apprenticeship. She made a home for herself. But still, there was something missing. A cold, empty hole where something should be. During the daylight, it was easy to ignore, but at night, lying alone in her room, she knew.
So it was somehow not a surprise when the man showed up in the shop she was working at. There was nothing special about his appearance, but somehow Jack still knew. This was the man who would show her what she had been missing. When he asked her to follow him, she didn’t have to think for a moment before agreeing. She had had a long day between classes and her evening at the shop. The wind was bitterly cold that evening and there was snow covering the streets. None of that mattered. It felt, in that moment, as if she were standing on a precipice and if she took that step forward, everything would change.
And it did.
There was a girl and there was a boy. He was just seven or eight and the moment she saw him –lips blue from the cold and snowflakes clinging to his hair and eyelashes– she knew he was going to grow up to melt hearts. He’d certainly melted hers.
And the man must have realized what happened because he smiled at her and said, “Welcome home, Jack. We think you’ll quite like it here.”
“I’m Alex,” said the boy, “Do you want to build a snowman with me?”
And at that moment, Jack knew that the little boy was what had been missing from her life. From the first smile, he’d burrowed his way into her heart and she would do anything she could to keep that smile safe.