Chapter 41
Miles
Saturday
My mind travels to the past. The night before catching that train.
The words I slipped through the mailbox I knew she would eventually see.
I didn’t think she would write to me right away, I just thought she would, eventually.
However, her expression doesn’t seem to follow the rest of the story that would naturally unfold from this memory of mine…
“You never saw my note in your mailbox?”
She observes me, her face seeming to search for something that’s just out of reach. “I didn’t.” She plays with her fluffy blue gloves, the ones she hasn’t yet taken off. “When did you leave me a note?”
“On the night before I left Evermere,” I say, and she frowns, shifting her body on the floor.
“I had a train ticket. And you weren’t there.
But I wanted to leave you an address you could write to.
If you decided to forgive me.” She looks at me attentively.
“I wrote you a note and left it in your mailbox because… you know… you always checked your mailbox.”
“Really?” she breathes out calmingly. “What did it say?”
“I can’t remember exactly what I wrote... it was an apology.”
Her lips curve into a soft smile.
“And the address of my college dorm,” I add, “saying that I hoped you would write me back.”
We remain silent for a few seconds. The lights keep flickering on the horizon.
We could have had this conversation before.
I could have been the one to contact her.
But my pain took a while to pass. Then I made peace with the fact that my choice had been to run from it.
And I let go, just the way my mind told me she had, too.
“I really never got to see that note,” she says. “I’m sorry too.” Her gaze holds a quiet tenderness. “I did go to your house. Your mom wasn’t there anymore. I thought you had decided to leave suddenly, cut ties with the town and start a blank slate. Unreachable. And I thought I had to respect it.”
“That’s partly correct,” I say.
She wasn’t completely wrong. I wanted to cut ties and start a blank slate.
I remember a lot from that day.
Though I can’t fully recall the words I hurled at her.
I was a dark sea of agitation. She was a blue, soothing sky, trying to change my color. She was sure she could do it. After all, the sea does reflect the sky.
I needed years of growth to realize it. Years to understand her light and to find my own.
“I’m really sorry I spoke to you like that,” I say, and I really mean it.
“Nothing justifies it. I just exploded. And it was at you. You didn’t deserve it.
” I look into her eyes, she keeps listening attentively.
“I was a complicated teenager. It was not an easy day. And I really liked you. I remember those flowers making me so… mad.”
She breathes out a small laugh, absorbing everything I’m telling her.
“I had already forgiven you, Miles. But thank you for saying this, even after all these years. It’s good to hear. I’m glad we’re making peace with the past.”
“Were you mad at me for a long time?”
Ella shakes her head. “We were teenagers. You were not complicated. We were young, in the unsteadiest, most insecurest age.” She makes up the words to make her point.
“We have all said things we didn’t mean, or regretted, at some point in our lives.
Especially in the whirlwind of growing up.
” She lifts one finger as if to emphasize the truth in that statement, and a faint laugh hums in my throat.
“I was sad, for a long time,” she continues, “but I never held on to anger.”
I smile. That was very her, indeed.
She smiles, too, with a hint of laughter. “I really thought you just left, not caring.”
I nod. It makes sense.
A tangled web of misunderstandings.
She asks me if I would mind sharing with her what I didn’t share back then: how that day had really unfolded and impacted me. I end up sharing every part of it I still remember, and it’s her turn to listen, the same way she would have listened nine years ago.
We stand there as the night grows darker.
At our one unplanned chance to understand each other.
Simply because life has its ways of working out.