He wrote twelve drafts of his article, but in the end, he knew what he needed to know, and he knew what he wanted to say. His final submission to Objet, his final piece for Meredith Cross, was short, barely five hundred words. He revealed almost nothing. He had finally realized the gift Carolyn had given him. He was the one person in the world to whom she’d told everything. Ossirian had been there for most of it, Toefler for a lot of it, but she’d given him something no one else in the world, not even Ossirian himself, possessed. He had finally learned what she’d been trying to teach him. How precious it is, to find out what your soul most wants to say to another’s.
The lesson he had taken from Carolyn Delgado, from Hans Toefler, from Christoph Ossirian himself, was that all the eyes in the world did not increase the value or meaning of something. It had to move you or it was nothing. The things he had learned about the trio of companions had moved him in ways he was still coming to terms with. The things he’d learned about Carolyn had moved him. And he realized that he had much to learn about himself.
He finished the article with tears in his eyes, posted it to Meredith along with his resignation, and went out into the night in search of a bottle of trago de caña. He held little hope that his search would be successful, but he was diligent; he would not stop until he found what he was after.
He had never stopped before. He refused to start now.