I Can’t Keep You, so I’ll Let Go Chapter 08
Third-Person POV
After the reporters left, a terrifying silence fell over the living room of the Hunt residence.
On the coffee table, Reynold’s acceptance letter still lay wide open.
Just moments ago, everyone had gathered around it, laughing and celebrating. But now, no one even glanced at it.
Frankie was the first to snap back to reality. He grabbed his car keys and marched straight toward the door. “We’re going to the school. I need to know where the hell he applied.”
Nicole followed closely behind him, her footsteps erratic and rushed.
Paige and Julia went along too.
Only Reynold remained on the couch, his face completely drained of color.
He wanted to call out and stop them. His mouth opened, but in the end, he couldn’t form a single word.
Since the school was already on break, Ollie’s homeroom teacher, Eleanor Glover, was the only one left
in the office.
When she saw them march in together, her expression didn’t register any surprise. It was almost as if she had expected this day to come.
Nicole rushed up to her and demanded, “Ms. Glover, where on earth did Ollie go? Is he purposely keeping it from us?”
Eleanor stared at her for a long beat before replying, “Ollie is an adult now. If he doesn’t want to tell you, I have no right to speak on his behalf.”
Frankie’s expression turned dark. “We are his parents! College applications are a massive deal. How
could he hide this from us?”
Eleanor put down the documents in her hand. Her tone turned cold as she said, “On the day we submitted his applications, I asked him if he wanted to consult his family one last time. He told me there was no need because you had already decided everything for him once.”
The moment she said this, the entire group fell dead silent.
Nicole’s face went instantly pale. She remembered that day when Ollie sat on the single armchair at the very edge of the room.
His fingernails had dug deep into his palms, and his eyes were bloodshot.
Yet, all she cared about back then was making sure he didn’t apply to any schools in Brookmere. She hadn’t even let him finish saying his score.
Eleanor continued, “Ollie had a terribly rough year. During the second semester of senior year, he would constantly hunch over his desk and grind through problems, his face completely pale.
“On top of that, his allowance wasn’t enough, so he constantly had to work part-time. He got heatstroke more than once from handing out flyers, and he even bruised his forehead on the job. I asked him why he didn’t tell his family, and he said it wouldn’t matter even if he did.”
Nicole’s lips trembled. She wanted to argue, but the words caught in her throat, and she couldn’t make a sound.
Finally, Eleanor pulled out an application form. “This is the paperwork Ollie filled out when he applied for a scholarship and work-study positions. Under the reason section, he wrote, ‘Lack of stable financial support from the family.’
“However, because your family is far from poor, his application was rejected. After all, nobody would ever think that a set of parents could be cruel enough to treat their biological son this way.”
A deathly silence fell over the office.
Indeed, the Hunt family was anything but poor.
Frankie was a senior executive at a foreign firm, pulling in a seven-figure salary, while Nicole owned three clothing boutiques, with a monthly revenue pushing six figures.
They casually showered their adopted son with luxury items, sneakers, and 50 thousand dollars in cash
as a reward.
Yet their biological son, Ollie, had been completely forgotten in a rented apartment for a whole year.
After leaving the school, the group drove straight to the apartment.
The landlady was cleaning up the place. When they showed up, she looked startled. “Are you looking for that young man? He terminated his lease a while ago.”
Nicole’s face went pale. “Did he happen to say where he was going?”
The landlady shook her head. “No. He cleaned the place spotless before he left and left the keys right on the table. He did leave behind a few rag dolls, though. I thought it was pretty sad, so I couldn’t bring myself to throw them out.”
As she spoke, she pulled a cardboard box out from a cabinet.
Sitting neatly inside were four rag dolls-Frankie, Nicole, Paige, and Julia.
The fabric was worn, and the stitching was crooked, making it obvious that Ollie had sewn them himself.
Nicole took one look, and her tears immediately spilled over.
For an entire year, they had abandoned Ollie in this tiny room. Yet, he had painstakingly made fake versions of them just to keep him company.
As Julia stood by the desk, she noticed a torn piece of paper sticking out from the side of the trash can.
She bent down to pick it up.
It was the postcard, ripped clean down the middle. It featured the image of the lake at Beaumont University.
And in the bottom right corner was her own handwriting. “Ollie, I’ll be waiting for you at Beaumont University.”
Julia’s fingertips trembled violently.
The other half of the postcard was pinned under one of the desk legs.
She crouched and pulled it out frantically before trying to piece them back together.
But the tear ran right through the center. No matter how she tried, the edges wouldn’t align.
Just like her relationship with Ollie, which she had personally ruined long ago.
