Page 84 of Your Echo
“After I met you, Stéphanie told me the story of your accident. I swear I had no idea who you were until that moment. I...I changed my name. Ace Turner isn’t the name I was born with.”
I let my eyes wander around the room, roaming over the outdated curtains and the crowded shelves of knickknacks on the wall—anywhere but the woman in front of me and the chair she’s sitting in.
“My parents named me Acton,” I say in a flat voice. “Acton Thompson. I’m Nigel and Rebecca Thompson’s son.”
* * *
When all was saidand done, she didn’t want to take the cheque. She didn’t want to accept my arrangement for a percent of all my future earnings to go to her. She wouldn’t agree to anything for her own sake. I had to plead with her to do it for Stéphanie before she finally let me put the piece of paper in her hand.
“I’m only saying yes because I think this might help her,” Jeanette explains, the tears that fell as I told her my story still drying on her face. “She’s always felt like I should have done more for myself, like I let things go too easily, and because of that shehasn’t let go at all.”
Instead of throwing me out of the building when she found out who I was and what role I played, Jeannette just laughed—a soft, sad sort of laugh that was accompanied with both a smile and some tears. She told me she made her peace with the past a long time ago, and that nothing I did the day of the accident could have changed what happened to her.
“Do you believe in fate?” she asks me, as she sets the cheque down on her desk.
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly.
“I do,” she says, without a trace of doubt, “and never more so than now. Of all the people Stéphanie could have fallen in love with, how could I not believe in fate when it ended up being you?”
“Love?” I almost choke on the word.
Jeanette chuckles. “Maybe it’s too soon to say, but I do know you two care about each other very much. Anyone who has met you both could see that. I think there’s a reason you found each other, and I don’t think you’re supposed toun-findeach other just yet.”
“So what do I do?” I ask desperately.
I’d never gotten this far while thinking the situation through in my head. I just wanted to make things as right as I could. Actually being with Stéphanie again always seemed like too unbelievably good of an outcome to consider planning for it.
“If youreallywant my motherly advice,” Jeanette tells me, “then I think you should do something romantic. It’s only obvious to people who know her very well, but Stéphanie has a romantic streak. I think it’s the dancer in her, the performer. She likes flowers, music, candles, that kind of thing.”
It’s the last thing I want to be thinking about with her mother right here, but I can’t help the images of Stéphanie that fill my mind at the mention of candles. I doubt I’ll ever look at one again without thinking of her. I force myself to shut the floodgate of my memories off, and I’m left with an idea, one that uses a different kind of flames.
“I think I know what to do,” I announce, “but I might need your help.”
