Chapter 23
Chloe woke early, eyes blinking open, a familiar feeling in her chest. It took her a moment to place it, because it had been a long time since she’d felt this—the urge to write.
She showered, then dressed in a blue silk blouse and jeans.
She felt delicate but strangely resolute as she picked up her new notebook and pen.
“Can I help you with anything?” Factory-Reset Rob asked.
“No, I’m good. Thank you,” she said. “Are you okay to wait here? I’ll come back for you later.”
“More than okay,” he said cheerfully. “Have a great morning!”
In the corridor, first light crept in soft and gold, slipping through leaded glass windows and painting long, fractured patterns across the pale, worn carpet.
Outside, the air was still cool, the grass scattered with tiny beads of dew.
The college was cloaked in that brief hush before the world stirs.
As she walked toward the library, a blackbird came to perch on the bench in front of her.
She paused to watch it, and it cocked its head at her.
In literature, a blackbird often symbolizes something: internal change, a death, perhaps an ominous omen.
What was this blackbird here to convey? Maybe in real life, you got to decide yourself.
So she chose not death, but clarity—a new beginning.
She found the library open and settled down at her favorite table.
Then she started to write: scene outlines, character notes, dialogue all poured out of her; she couldn’t move her pen fast enough.
She only stopped, hours later, when she heard music coming from the chapel, voices walking through the cloisters.
There was a service this morning, and she wanted to go, so she packed up her things.
She didn’t go back to get Rob. It didn’t feel right taking him into a religious building, and she wasn’t ready to reconnect either.
While she was still devastated about John, in the wake of his vitriol last night, something else had settled: clarity.
Clarity about Rob, how she felt about him.
The moral ambiguity that had been gnawing at her for days had lifted, the seesaw of the pros and cons list, wondering about the sex, the money, the secrecy.
She was giving him back. It was not what she wanted.
Outside the library she saw the same blackbird, waiting for her.
It seemed to nod, then took flight, soaring up into the air, free, magnificent.
And she knew what it meant. If there was a hole in her life, she knew it was not going to be filled by Rob, by anyone. She needed to fill it herself.
The chapel was half empty, unsurprising after a night of revelry.
Chloe sometimes went to church with her parents, but it wasn’t a constant in her life, the way it had been here.
At Lincoln, chapel services had felt woven into the tapestry of college routine.
She cherished the calm, the music, the time to reflect.
In the frenetic buzz of university life, it had been a precious moment of contemplation.
She slipped quietly through the carved wooden door, the scent of candle wax and wood polish unlocking a hundred memories at once.
Sean was sitting alone in a pew by the altar.
She didn’t hesitate to slide herself in beside him.
She wasn’t losing him again, not over an awkward conversation.
She needed a thicker skin, she knew that now.
In love, in life, and in her professional ambitions.
“Morning,” Sean said, offering her a tentative smile.
“Morning,” she said, smoothing her blouse as she sat.
Her gaze drifted up to the stained glass windows—towering panels of color and light. The prophets and apostles felt like old friends. How many times had she sat here gazing up at their faces? How many people over the centuries had sat in these pews, seeking answers, guidance?
“I’m sorry about last night,” Sean whispered, as more people trickled into the pews around them. “If I was weird at dinner.”
“No,” she said softly. “You were right, it was unprofessional of me to ask.”
He reached out to take her hand. “I hear the imp did you a mischief last night,” he said, raising his eyebrows at her.
“What?” she said too quickly, feeling a flush rise to her cheeks as her mind leaped to John, that unforgettable kiss in the cellar.
“Rumor has it the imp trapped you in the down deep. You missed dessert.”
“Oh. Yes, that,” she said, clasping the smooth oak pew in front of her with both hands. “Maybe this place is a little haunted. Shelves don’t fall over by themselves.”
They fell quiet as the organ began to play. The sound swelled from the antechapel, behind a cedarwood screen.
“Is that John?” she asked quietly.
“You think the chaplain would pass up a chance to have him play?” Sean whispered back.
It was hauntingly beautiful, the kind of music that got into your bones and stirred your soul.
Perhaps live music was one of the things that was missing in her life.
And yet though the organ music was perfectly played, something about it didn’t sound like John.
There was a lightness that didn’t feel like him.
The chaplain stepped forward to address the congregation.
“How lovely it is to see so many old friends here this morning,” he began.
“Old friends from past seasons play a crucial role in shaping and strengthening who we are. It’s why these reunions are so precious.
‘As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another’; so it says in Proverbs.
Life might move us forward, but the bonds of friendship do not fade… ”
The words landed like a stone on still water. Chloe felt them ripple through her.
Sean leaned in. “This sounds like it was written for me…or do I just have main character syndrome?” he asked, and Chloe had to cover her mouth to stop from laughing.
When the service ended, they walked out blinking into the sunlight that poured across the quad in a warm, yellow square.
“That took me back,” Sean said.
“Me too,” she said, pausing, not in a rush to go anywhere.
“I wanted to say, I will read your script,” he told her. She frowned, confused. “If you tell me it’s good. Fuck it, I’ll take on the project without even reading it if you tell me I should,” Sean added, flashing that familiar boyish grin. “I trust your opinion, I always have.”
“It’s not good,” she said, looking up at him now. “It’s not terrible, but it’s not a Sean Adler film.”
“What’s a Sean Adler film?”
“Full of angst and gore and too many wide shots,” she teased.
He slung an arm around her shoulders. “Too many wide shots, hey? You know I do love a wide shot. Give me a fish-eye lens, and I am a happy man.” They grinned at each other. “Will you get in trouble at work for not selling me on it?”
“Yes. But he’ll get over it. Maybe one day I’ll send you something good, through your agent, of course.”
“Why don’t you send me a Chloe Fairway script? That’s something I’d like to read.”
“I don’t have one,” she said, then paused. “But I will.”
“Well, when you have an idea you want to work on, why don’t we knock something about together?” He looked at her with a steady gaze now, full of sincerity. “I’d like that.”
She leaned into his shoulder. “I’m so proud of you. I really mean that.”
He gave her a squeeze. “Where’s Rob?”
She shrugged, not knowing what to say.
“You know, he’s not who I picture you with,” Sean said.
“Who did you picture?” she asked.
Sean squinted in contemplation. “Someone more eccentric. Old-fashioned. When I imagine you as a grown-up, I see you in a thatched cottage, some higgledy-piggledy house stuffed full of books and instruments, weird sculptures made of driftwood and cheese.” She burst out laughing.
“You have kids with names like Persephone and Winter. You put on family productions every Christmas, where you take it in turns to reimagine A Christmas Carol.”
“That sounds delightful,” she said with a sigh, but it was tinged with sadness because he still knew her so well, and they had lost all these years of friendship.
“Lovely as Rob seems, I don’t see him improvising family productions,” Sean added.
“You might be right,” she said.
“I guess I saw you with someone more…impish,” Sean said, putting a hand on each of her shoulders and turning her to face him. There was a flicker of something in his face, regret maybe. “I’m sorry if I got in the way of that back then.”
“I think I might have burned my bridges there,” she admitted.
“Because you brought some Calvin Klein model to humiliate us all on the dance floor and the sports field.” He threw her a mock-jealous growl.
“Free up your dance card and see what happens.” Then his eyes shifted to something serious.
“You know he’s a pacifist though, right?
If you’re waiting for him to challenge your boyfriend to a duel, you might be waiting a long time. ”