On the Sixth Thanksgiving, I Stopped Waiting for Him Chapter 07
“Vivian has donated every dollar she’s made from her art shows to the Missing Children’s
Foundation. She’s spent the last six years doing good to make up for what she did…”
“Can you ask the prosecutor to drop the case, for old times’ sake?”
“I’ll give you anything you want. I’ll spend every last cent I have making this up
“Just don’t let her go to prison. She won’t survive it…”
to you…
I lay on the floor, the shards of glass in my back digging deeper into my flesh with every breath.
But suddenly, I didn’t feel the pain anymore.
The man in front of me had finally become someone entirely different from the boy who had
screamed outside that van six years ago.
They were two different people.
One had cherished me.
The other had pushed me into a pile of broken glass.
I had waited six years for this moment.
I was finally tearing him out of my heart.
Detective Cole crouched beside me and draped his jacket over me.
“The ambulance is outside. Stay with me.”
I looked at Julian. My voice was flat and lifeless.
“You can’t make this up to me, Julian.”
“Would losing everything you own give me my eye back?”
“Can it give me back the uterus that was taken from me?”
“Would it make up for the more than a thousand days and nights I spent locked in a pigpen?”
The last of my strength left me.
Everything went black.
When I woke up, I was staring at a hospital ceiling.
Detective Cole had somehow fallen asleep beside my bed.
His police jacket was draped over the back of a chair.
I moved my fingers slightly, and he woke at once.
“You’re awake?”
“The nurse said you lost too much blood. You need IV fluids.”
I opened my mouth, but my throat felt like sandpaper.
He stood and poured me some water.
“After you passed out, security stopped Julian from following you. Vivian’s already been booked.”
Just then, the hospital room door opened.
A young officer poked his head inside with a grin.
“Detective Cole, is Claire awake?”
Detective Cole turned and shot him a glare.
“Miller, don’t you have anything better to do?”
“The lieutenant asked me to find out who’s taking Vivian Reed’s statement.”
“I am.”
“Got it.”
Ryan Miller started to close the door, then couldn’t resist adding, “Detective Cole, you’ve been here for two days straight. If you don’t go change clothes soon, you’ll smell worse than the stray cat at the station.”
He turned to me and grinned. “Claire, don’t let his rough edges fool you. He has never taken care of anyone like this before.”
After the door shut, the room fell quiet for two seconds.
The tips of Ethan Cole’s ears turned pink.
“Miller talks too much. Don’t listen to him.”
I suddenly realized there was something familiar about him.
He had a high-bridged nose and a tiny mole on the left side of his chin.
A memory stirred.
Back in high school, there had been a boy who sat behind me in our junior-year English class.
He used to pull sticky notes from his desk drawer and slip them onto my chair.
Sometimes, he’d remind me about my English essay. Other times, he’d draw a chubby little cat.
What was his name again?
“Detective Cole, what’s your full name?”
“Ethan Cole.”
“Ethan Cole? Ethan from our English class?”
He smiled, looking a little embarrassed.
“You remember me?”
The boy who’d sat behind me in high school had worn black-rimmed glasses and been so skinny.
The man standing in front of me now was broad-shouldered and stood tall. He looked nothing like that awkward, gangly boy.
“Claire, I searched everywhere for you after you disappeared.”
“During my two years on the SWAT team, I used my vacation time to search across twelve states. I put my phone number on every missing-person flyer Julian printed.”
Sunlight fell across my damaged face, but Ethan never looked away.
“I finally found you after six years and three months.”
“Claire, I was terrified I’d never find you.”
The hospital room fell silent for a long time.
He didn’t say anything else. Instead, he pulled up the photo gallery on his phone and showed me
two old pictures.
They were old photos of sticky notes, faded and pixelated.
one showed a crooked-eared cat with a line written beside it: [Claire, your ponytail is crooked
today 1
The other showed a chubby cat lying beneath the moon.
Beside it were the words: [Happy Thanksgiving. I want to spend every Thanksgiving with you. ]
My nose burned.
“Back then, you told me you liked Julian, so I was too afraid to tell you how I felt. Then I realized
that if I waited until after graduation, it would be too late.”
The IV dripped softly beside me.
“Claire, I lost you once. Will you give me a chance to take care of you now?~
“I mean for the rest of my life.”
