Under_The_Whispering_Door_by_TJ_Klune

“What does that mean?”
“I can’t tell you that,” Hugo said. “I wish I could. All I can do is show you
the path before you, and help you make your own decisions.”
“What if I make the wrong one?”
“Then we start again,” Hugo said. “And hope for the best.”
Wallace snorted. “There’s that faith thing again.”
Hugo laughed, looking surprised as he did so. “Yeah, I guess so. You’re
an odd man, Wallace Price.”
A flash of memory. Of calling Mei strange. “That might be the nicest thing
anyone has ever said to me.”
“Is it? I’ll keep that in mind.” His smile faded. “It’s going to be hard.
When you leave.”
Wallace swallowed thickly. “Why?”
“Because you’re my friend,” Hugo said, as if it were the easiest thing in
the world. No one had ever said that to Wallace before, and he was
devastated by it. Here, at the end, he’d found a friend. “You…”
He remembered what Nelson had told him. “Fit.”
“Yeah,” Hugo said. “You fit. I didn’t expect that.”
And because he could, he said, “You should have unexpected it.”
Hugo laughed again, and they stood side by side, watching the tea plants
sway back and forth.
The house was quiet.
Wallace sat on the floor.
He stared at the dying embers in the fireplace, Apollo’s head in his lap.
He rubbed the dog’s ears absentmindedly, lost in thought.
He wasn’t aware he was going to speak until he did. “I never got to grow
old.”
“No,” Nelson said from his chair. “I don’t suppose you did. And if you’d
like, I can tell you that it’s not so great, that all the aches and pains are
terrible and that I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, but that’d be a lie.”
“I wouldn’t like that.”
“I didn’t think you would.” Nelson tapped Wallace’s shoulder with his
cane. “Do you wish you had?”