Page 16 of At First Flight
-Your Friend
I cry on the train back to Edinburgh. Not quietly or pretty either. But no one bothers me. It is a welcome reprieve.
Lila,
You’re starting to walk straighter. I know it, even if I can’t see it.
Go to Dean Village-ironic, yes. Find the café with the chipped teapot. The owner’s name is Moira. Tell her you want “whatever’s warm.”
You’re allowed to be happy.
-Your Friend
Dean Village is storybook perfect. Siobhan gives me soup and shortbread and a conspiratorial wink. When I ask about the man who sent me, she smiles and walks away.
Back at the hotel, the suite feels more like home than anywhere I’ve stayed. But I don’t belong here, either. Nothing feels quite right.
I’m not hiding anymore. I’m healing.
I go to Stirling Castle, and then to a whiskey tasting in Oban. I talk to strangers. I buy a pair of earrings. I let myself laugh.
And each day, a letter waits. Simple. Steady. Anonymously signed. But filled with so much of him, I start to hear his voice when I read. I wish that he hadn’t been called away at the airport and spent each of these days with me. A longing that overwhelms me if I think about it too long.
Lila,
If this were a book, you’d be at the turning point.
So what happens next?
What do you want it to be?
-Your Friend
I sit on the floor of the suite that night, surrounded by his letters. Fourteen of them now. Each one folding open a different piece of me. I don’t know who he really is. Not in the way the world defines knowing. But I know how he makes me feel. He’s been a friend in all the ways I needed one when I was too embarrassed to contact home. And maybe that’s enough.
The last letter is hidden in the sleeve of the coat I nearly forgot to pack. I find it just before heading to the airport.
Lila,
You asked who I am.
The truth is, I’m someone who could watch you break and do nothing. That’s what the world knows me as. Cold. Heartless. Selfish.
But with you, you’re seeing the me I can be.
I’m someone who believes in you. In the way I know you’ll stand back up again and again.
I hope you find your new beginning.
-D
The initial stops me.
D.
Dean. Seeing him acknowledge himself seems more personal. I sit on the edge of the bed, suitcase open, coat folded beside me. I’m not going to find him. That’s not the point. The point is that I found something else: stillness, truth, and the voice I’d buried under years of being small to make someone else feel big.
I breathe in the Edinburgh air one last time, letting it fill my lungs. I’m ready to go home. Not to a person. To myself.
