Chapter Fifty-Three
Over the next couple of months I don’t go anywhere. I don’t do anything. I lie low. I watch very little TV, and I definitely don’t get on the internet. Eventually the story dies down, the reporters stop hounding me, and something else in the world takes its place.
I start seeing a therapist and…healing. After a lifetime of emotions full of emptiness and darkness, I actually visualize the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s a wonderful thing to visualize.
I don’t go to Gideon’s trial, but I do meet privately with the judge in his chambers and truthfully answer all his probing questions. No more hiding. Several people on Gideon’s personal staff are brought up on charges, too.
Bluma and her family have been solid for me, supporting, not pushing, letting me go through everything at my own pace. Bluma’s dad was on Gideon’s advisory board, so he’s just as confused as everyone else. He’d devoted years to Gideon’s ministry.
Eventually though, they begin going to a different church and seem happy. I don’t go with them. One day I suspect I’ll go back to God and prayer, but it’ll be on my terms. Her family respects that.
Spring rolls around, and I turn seventeen. I keep my hair pixie short, but I put it back to blond and legally change my name to Eve. I study for and pass my GED. The courts emancipate me, and I move across the country to Murfreesboro, Tennessee. I move in with Anne where we both enroll in a sound engineering program at Middle Tennessee State University.
Then one morning I wake up and realize I’m actually happy, content, and working solidly toward complete and whole.
“Hey, girl.” Anne plops down beside me on the couch in our college apartment. She slides her iPad onto my lap. “I really think you need to see this.”
She has YouTube up and frozen on a video of West. My belly does that delicious roll that only he can make it do. I take in a very deep breath as I stare at his picture. It’s Anne that reaches over me and presses play.
“Watching you in a rainy Central Park. Wondering what lay beneath your haunted eyes. Holding your hand. Falling asleep with you in my arms. Kissing you for the first time. For these reasons and so many more: I love you, Eve. Always. This is dedicated to you, my one and only muse. Wherever you are, Eve, know I’m always thinking of you.” He starts playing the song he and I wrote together, and it’s like I’ve never heard it before.
As I listen to the familiar words and notes, I become entranced, drawn in by his voice, our lyrics, and the emptiness in me I realize only he can fill.
Anne sighs. “I think I’m in love with him.”
I ignore her as I take in every expression, every tone, every syllable of his voice. I drink in his too gorgeous face and am overwhelmed with the urge to touch him, to kiss him, to love him.
Gradually the song comes to an end, and Anne reaches over me to scroll down to the comment section.
On and on I read hundreds and hundreds of positive comments. Until my eyes fall on the very last one:
I sniff back the tears I feel coming. Assisting abused children. It’s exactly what he told me he was going to do.
Without asking if I want it, Anne hands me my phone. I wipe my eyes as she takes the iPad and walks off, and with a finger I hadn’t expected to be so steady, I dial West’s number.
He answers before the first ring even completes. “Eve?”
“West,” I breathe.
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