Chapter 10 - The Price of Second Thoughts
Three months later, the final decree arrived in a heavy manila envelope with the gold seal of the county district court stamped on the upper left corner.
I signed the acknowledgement of receipt at my desk at the regional logistics headquarters. I was no longer an operations manager. My new business cards, which had arrived from the printer the week before, read: *Elena Ross, Vice President of Maritime Infrastructure and Global Transit.*
I had dropped Thornton from my name without fanfare. It took three trips to the social security office, two to the passport agency, and forty-five minutes with the HR director, but by February, Elena Thornton had ceased to exist.
The Oakridge house had sold in forty-eight hours for forty thousand dollars over the asking price. A young family with twin girls and a golden retriever had bought it. When I signed the closing papers, the real estate agent told me the mother had cried with joy because of the beautiful built-in bookshelves in the den—the shelves I had paid a carpenter four thousand dollars to install for Nathan’s thirty-fourth birthday.
I had taken the proceeds, paid off the remaining debt on my new two-bedroom loft overlooking the river, and invested the rest in a municipal bond fund that paid quarterly dividends into an account that bore only one signature: mine.
Nathan, according to the academic grapevine that Rachel regularly monitored, had moved to a small town in Idaho, where he was teaching two sections of introductory composition at a community college on an annual adjunct contract. Meredith Sterling had married a sixty-year-old commercial real estate developer from Scottsdale whose family had subsequently bailed out her foundation on the condition that she step down as executive director.
The grand romantic experiment had ended, not with an artistic renaissance, but with a ledger that failed to balance.
On a cold, brilliant Tuesday in late March, I was preparing for my first official inspection tour of the shipping terminals in Rotterdam. My bags were packed—two immaculate, lightweight hard-shell suitcases that sat by the door of my loft.
The apartment was filled with afternoon sunlight. The hardwood floors were covered with antique kilim rugs I had bought at an auction in Seattle. On the wide windowsill, three pots of white hyacinths were in full bloom, filling the high-ceilinged room with a sharp, sweet fragrance that carried no memories of Oakridge.
At 3:30 p.m., my intercom buzzed from the building lobby.
I walked over to the wall unit and pressed the talk button. "Yes?"
"Elena?"
The voice was thin, raspy, distorted by the speaker, but instantly recognizable.
Nathan.
I stood with my finger hovering over the plastic button. A month ago, my pulse might have jumped. Today, my heart beat with the slow, steady rhythm of a metronome.
"Nathan," I said through the speaker. "You are trespassing on private residential property. My building has a strict security policy."
"Please," he said, his voice cracking against the microphone. "Just let me come up for five minutes. I took the bus from Boise. It took fourteen hours, Elena. I’m standing in the lobby with snow on my boots. Please. I just need you to look at me."
"I am leaving for the airport in twenty minutes, Nathan," I said evenly. "I have a flight to Europe."
"I don't have anyone else," he whispered, and through the cheap speaker, I could hear the sound of his breath catching in a sob that was entirely real, entirely self-pitying, and entirely too late. "She left me, Elena. Meredith hasn't answered my letters in two months. The department won't return my calls. My mother won't speak to me because she says I brought shame on the family. You're the only person who ever actually saw me. You're the only one who kept me safe."
I listened to him, looking across my sunlit room at my packed bags, my passport sitting on the console table, and the hyacinths blooming in the light.
He had finally told the absolute truth.
He hadn't come back because he loved me. He hadn't come back because he valued the seven years we had built. He had come back because the fantasy had collapsed, the audience had walked out, and he needed an administrator to manage the wreckage of his life once again.
"Nathan," I said into the microphone.
"Yes? Elena, please—"
"I was never your safety net," I said, my voice calm, clear, and utterly cold. "I was your foundation. And when you decided to tear it up to see what was underneath, the house fell on you."
"Elena—"
"Goodbye, Nathan."
I released the button. Then I walked over to the control panel beside the entrance door, flipped the master switch that disconnected the lobby intercom from my unit, and picked up my wool coat from the bench.
I put on my gloves, picked up my boarding pass and my passport, and took the private service elevator down to the garage level where the town car was waiting to take me to the international terminal.
I did not go through the front lobby. I did not look out the tinted windows as the car pulled out of the basement ramp into the crisp spring air.
I looked at the digital clock on the dashboard. It was 3:55.
May you like
The flight to Amsterdam boarded in two hours. The weather in the North Sea was clear, the cargo manifests were certified, and the horizon ahead was completely empty.
***
