Where the Past Ends Chapter 09
After the truth came out, Ray Delgado called me himself.
“Elliot, letting you go was bad judgment on our part.
“You can come back any time you want.”
I closed my laptop.
“No, thank you.
“You don’t need an employee. You need somebody whose name will never cause trouble.
“That isn’t me.”
Diane Whitlock came by with a basket of fruit.
“I had someone come out and repaint the door.
“Stay. I’ll cut your rent in half.”
I didn’t hold any of it against her.
“Thank you, but I’m moving out.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Overseas.”
Back in college I’d applied to a program abroad.
Dr. Anton Vessel, a professor there, saw what had happened online and emailed me again.
He’d held my place and helped me put in for a scholarship.
The last line read, “Your record and your ability shouldn’t be buried under a campaign of lies.”
I accepted the offer from Tidewatch Institute in Noravia.
Naomi found me the day before I left.
She’d lost a lot of weight, and she was holding an old scarf my grandmother had left behind.
“Eli, Ruth gave me this.”
I stayed in the doorway and didn’t ask her in.
“Say what you came to say and go.”
She held out the scarf.
“Your grandmother knitted it for me.
“I don’t have any right to keep it.”
I took it from her.
“No. You don’t.”
Her eyes went red instantly.
“Derek and I are done.
“I haven’t seen him since they took him in.”
“That’s got nothing to do with me.”
“Eli, I dream about her every night.”
She lowered her head.
“She asks me why I didn’t take care of you.
“I can’t look at her.”
My hands tightened around the scarf.
“Then don’t answer her.
“What you owe that woman, you’ll never pay back.”
Naomi suddenly dropped to her knees in the doorway.
“I know I was wrong.
“Give me one more chance.
“We had four years.
“You loved me too much to just switch it off this fast.”
I looked at her.
“I still loved you while I was waiting at that airport.
“I still couldn’t let go watching you put yourself in front of Derek at the engagement.
“The day she died, some part of me was still hoping you’d stay.”
She looked up, and the hope came back into her face.
I stepped back.
“But you never once chose me.
“So I’m not choosing you.”
She caught the doorframe.
“I’ll wait.
“However long it takes, I’ll wall”
closed the door
“I’m never turning around”
The next day, a crowd of them was waiting at Bellwarren International Airport.
Owen came over holding flowers.
“Elliot, we came to see you off.”
Kevin’s eyes were red.
“We were WTON,
“Don’t hate us.”
Dr. Reese pushed to the front too
“The university’s ready to restore every honor and recommendation.
“You can still leave here as one of Bellwarren State’s distinguished graduates,”
I pushed the flowers away,
“I don’t want them.”
Owen’s face tightened.
“We apologized already
“Why are you still being so hard about this?”
I looked at him.
“Vorgiving you is mine to give.
“An apology doesn’t put me under any obligation to hand it over.”
Kevin tried to explain, quieter.
“But Derek fooled us too.”
“He fooled you once,”
I pulled my suitcase forward.
“You all worked together to fool me for three years.
“Don’t stand there acting innocent.”
Not one of them had anything left to say.
I turned and walked into the security line.
Naomi came running across the terminal.
“Eli.”
She shoved through the crowd and shouted, “I love you.
“Wait for me. I’ll find you, wherever you are.”
I never looked back.
A few hours later, the plane climbed above the clouds.
I held my grandmother’s urn in my lap and looked out the window.
The sky was a deep, hard blue.
Somewhere under those clouds was the country I’d spent more than twenty years in.
It held everything that had been done to me, and it held every memory of how she loved me.
I rested a hand on the urn.
“Grandma, we’re going to see the ocean.
“Nobody’s ever going to push us around again.”
The plane flew on.
I shut off my phone and opened my enrollment packet.
The people from my old life were still standing where I’d left them, waiting for me to turn around.
But my life had already started over.
