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As if the room has always been abandoned.
“He’s gone,” I say.
Did he know I would figure out who he was?
Or was he scared of something else?
“What are these?” Hunter asks.
I look as he holds up an envelope from my desk in the front row. I walk over and notice all of the desks have envelopes on them.
I take the one in Hunter’s hand, seeing it has my name and my address at home.
“Letters,” I tell him. “Letters we wrote to parents…that we never intended to mail.”
He looks at the front of it again, then turns it over. “Open in twenty-two years,” he reads.
I stare at the inscription that I didn’t write written on the back flap.Twenty-two years?
He moves between the desks, picking up a few others. “They all say that.”
I look around, hoping to find some other clue. Why did he leave? Is he guilty?
Is Deacon with him?
They must’ve left the cognac on Conor’s grave.New Orleans.
Hunter comes to my side again. “Open the letter now.”
“I know what it says,” I tell him. “I wrote it.”
“So why does he want to open it again in twenty-two years?”
I think back tohis lectures on the rivalry and discussions on community pride and what we perpetuate generation after generation.
“Because we weren’t writing them to our parents,” I finally say, understanding. “We were writing them tousas parents. Because we change.”
Like my parents and his parents probably have. My dad was a lot like me. Now, the idea scares him.
“Why not twenty years, though?” he presses. “Why twenty-two?”
“Because he…” I swallow and shake my head. “Because he lost her twenty-two years ago.”
He wants us to be in our forties, like he is now.
I fold up the envelope and slide it into my pocket, leaving the classroom for the last time.
Hunter takes my hands as we stroll down the hallway. “You think he’ll be back?” he asks.
“I hope not.”
But I say it with a little smile. If he is guilty of something, I’d like to know more before I wish him caught.
And if he is guilty of her disappearance—or death—he and Deacon are dangerous. Better gone than near us.
I think I’ll miss Mr. Bastien a little.
I’m not sure I would like Manas Doran, though.
