Chapter 17

17

E LIZABETH

I study her before moving my eyes to him.

His features are striking, his blue eyes unique and mystifying even then.

He seems at ease, although he’s not smiling. But nothing in his stance speaks of tension or turmoil in his life.

Interesting.

I don’t know if I would have the strength to have his poise under those circumstances.

I check the rest of the pictures in front of me.

David when he was sixteen. David behind the wheel in his first car. David playing sports. David mowing the lawn.

She slides another stack of photographs in front of me.

“She always wanted to have his pictures in print,” she says while I study every photograph. “She was good to him. Definitely better than my parents,” she adds, softly chuckling, a hint of dark humor in her voice.

My eyes peruse the photographs.

David becoming a man. The eighteen-year-old David had a cocked eyebrow, a lopsided smile, and sculpted abs.

He looked like trouble. And the glint in his eyes is familiar to me as it has survived the passing of time.

He was good looking even then, his blood outbursting with life. I look at him with tenderness I never thought I’d have in me. There’s a small age gap between the eighteen year old David and me as a twenty something year old as I am right now.

I wonder how we would’ve been if we were about the same age and met then.

Elizabeth and David.

David and Elizabeth.

Two crazy people madly in love.

Too young to understand what was happening to us.

In all fairness, I like the real-life age gap between us and the man he has become. The life he has lived. The stories he had carved out of his soul.

I relish how whatever he has gone through makes him softer and more understanding when it comes to me.

I like David, the complicated man, the fighter, the drifter finding his way after losing his bearings.

I revel in how he’s made a stop on the impressive highway of joys and sorrows called a well-lived life and looked in my direction, taking that exit, slowing down, changing his destination.

“He was cute,” I say curtly and push all the pictures away.

My voice is at odds with my words.

The woman reads my eyes briefly before putting the pictures back and closing the bag.

She drops it next to her on the table and resumes drinking coffee.

“It’s not what you'd hoped to find?” she asks after setting the cup down.

“It’s all right,” I murmur, my gaze trailing down.

A few moments move away.

“What happened to them?” I ask, rigid in my seat, lifting my eyes to her.

“Eleanor and David?” she says.

I nod in response.

“David wanted to become an engineer, and Eleanor was very supportive of him, but…” she stops, a smile creeping across her lips, her eyes moving away from mine.

“He met a woman,” I suggest.

Her focus is back on me, a shred of curiosity lining her stare.

“You know about her?”

Her.

With that single word, she tells me how consequential that woman had been in his life.

The ghost.

The one who got away.

His first love.

Perhaps the only true love.

The woman who had entered his life like a meteoroid and, instead of burning up in the stratosphere––mesosphere to be exact––became a meteorite and carved a sizable hole into his soul, so big that sometimes we’re both getting lost in it.

That’s why I’m here.

And that’s why I have her dress in my closet.

The dress that was supposed to be hers ended up hugging my frame.

He’d made a mistake, he said.

It wasn’t supposed to be hers in the end.

But that’s not what young David believed.

With her dress, I received his compassion, gentleness, and protection.

Her force was mighty and impacted things with the strength of a steel chisel biting into a marble slab.

It must’ve put a lot of pain in him before the warm waters of forgiveness filled up those craters.

“Anna,” I toss at her, like a seasoned gambler bluffing while holding a hand of mixed cards.

Gnawing interest replaces her casual curiosity.

“You know about Anna?”

Anna.

Her name rings like a bell in the middle of winter. A bit sad. A bit muffled.

“I don’t know much about her. I just put two and two together.”

I can see in her eyes how much she’d love to question me about this. How do I know about Anna? Where did I get this idea that it was always about her?

Anna must be more than a crying bell. She must be a deeply buried secret.

She had been his secret for so long. And he’s already said that no one knows about her except me.

And this woman, Sylvia Briggs, Eleanor’s neighbor.

He must’ve thought about the people who were actually in his life. Not the ones from his past.

David and his secrets. And me, being the nosy critter that I am.

“I found some information… online,” I say reluctantly.

I stop awkwardly as her expression shifts, and I don’t know how to read it.

It’s a weird mix of despondency and unwillingness to continue, so it comes as no surprise to see her check the time.

A fake smile clings to her lips when she returns her attention to me.

“I’m so sorry. I wish I could continue our conversation, but I have a yoga class soon and need to get ready. I hope you don’t mind that we have to wrap it up.”

“Oh. Of course. I don’t mind,” I say. “I need to go, anyway.”

At once, I push out of my seat, almost knocking over my chair.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “And thank you for the coffee. And the information.”

The cadence in my voice gives away my irritation. No matter how much I want to act cool like I’m not affected, I truly am.

I knew this story had significance. But I didn’t expect it to be that big. Now more than ever, I wish I had known what had happened to that woman.

I almost ask Sylvia, but I change my mind and look for my way out as I can’t wait to leave. Her stare alerts me my behavior hasn’t gone unnoticed.

Like a parrot, I thank her again for the treat.

“Wait,” she says as I’m about to bolt out. “I’ll pack some cookies for you.”

This has the feel of a peace offering. It also seems like she wants to make me stay a little longer as she ponders something else.

She turns her back to me, reaches inside a drawer, and pulls out a ziplock bag––a little smaller than the one on the table––with the remnants of a life that has vanished into the existential sunset.

She slides four cookies into the bag and closes it before swiveling to me.

Her eyes glint with mixed feelings, so whatever she has pondered stays a secret.

“Okay,” I say. “Thank you,” I add, gesturing with the hand holding the bag.

I give her a flimsy smile and turn around to make a beeline for the door.

Her footsteps follow me before I notice they shuffle in the opposite direction.

“Wait,” she says, and I turn to her, not knowing why she stopped me again.

“Here,” she says, reaching for the ziplock bag on the table.

She snatches it up and offers it to me with a trembling hand.

“Take it,” she says, unable to hide her nerves.

Now I see why it has taken her so long. The ongoing battle lights her eyes, making her doubt herself.

She shoves the bag into my hand.

“She’s dead, and I haven’t seen him in years, so it’s the same to me. Maybe you can put this information to good use. Maybe it makes a difference for you. It surely doesn’t do anything for me. Eleanor wanted me to keep it. But even she didn’t know why she felt that way.”

I close my fist around the edge of the bag, unable to move.

“Anna…” I murmur. “What happened to Anna?” I say so quietly that the evening breeze is louder than my words.

Her face turns to ashes.

“Anna is dead,” she murmurs, her eyes dissolving into pools of apprehension.

She motions to the bag.

“There is stuff in there. Stuff I never wanted to read, so I didn’t. It wasn’t addressed to me. I was only the keeper.”

With that, we say goodbye to each other.

I don’t have much recollection of the next few moments.

I exit her place and make a beeline for my car, walking like a shell, not knowing what I’ve gotten myself into.

Mechanically, I slip behind the steering wheel and roll my car away. Nothing catches my attention, my brain blank, unwilling to mull over what happened.

The voice inside my head is nowhere to be found.

It’s like she’s vanished or gone on strike.

The next half an hour passes in a blur, my eyes vacant, pinned on the road in front of me.

My phone pings with several notifications.

I don’t bother to reach inside my backpack, pull my phone out, and check the messages.

Eventually, I make it home, and the first thing I do after stopping and exiting my ride and entering my place is take the ziplock bag to my bedroom.

I peek under my bed, slide out my improvised safety box, lift the lid, and drop it inside, having no intent to check what’s inside.

Not for a while, at least.