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She sat perfectly still in the driver’s seat for a minute, just staring at the house where she’d grown up.
When she thought of home, her true home, it wasn’t the apartment she and Stefan had lived in together, where Damon now slept on the couch. It was here, the house she’d lived in for the first part of her life, until after the Salvatore brothers had come to Fell’s Church and everything had changed.
When this is over, we’re going to go everywhere, she remembered Stefan saying. I’ll show you all the places I’ve been, and we’ll find new parts of the world together. But we’ll have your house, the place you grew up in, to come home to. We’ll have a home together.
She had cried then, full of joy and tenderness, and now her eyes filled with tears again. It was all such a waste.
They’d never had a chance to come here together, not as the house’s owners. She didn’t know if she was going to keep the house now, or sell it. Maybe she would lock it up and leave it just the way it was. Let it be drowned in cobwebs, like Miss Havisham’s wedding cake.
But she had needed to come here once. It would be, somehow, rude and wrong to not accept Stefan’s last gift.
Damon had offered to come with her. But she couldn’t bring him on her first visit to the home Stefan had bought for them both. This was something she had to do alone.
If she was ever going to move forward, she had to face the future she and Stefan would have had together. She had to let it go.
Elena got out of the car and walked quickly across the lawn, her heels leaving little holes in the grass. She passed the big quince tree and climbed the steps to the front porch.
The key turned in the lock, but when Elena flicked the light switch, nothing happened. Of course, the electricity must have been turned off. It had been months. That would be the first thing she’d have to get settled.
Pausing for a moment, she realized that she had decided: This was her house. She was keeping it.
Aunt Judith, Robert, and Margaret had taken the furniture with them to their new apartment in Richmond, but there was a candle on the window ledge by the front door.
She lit the candle with the matches she found beside it and tucked the matches into the tiny purse, matching her bridesmaid’s dress, which she carried over one shoulder.
The flickering flame of the candle sent shadows sliding wildly across the walls. Climbing the stairs, Elena automatically skipped over the squeaky fifth step. She remembered skipping the same step when she had snuck out at night to cruise the quiet, darkened streets of Fell’s Church in Meredith’s car, when they were high school juniors.
She could still see the unfaded patches of wallpaper where picture frames had hung. She could imagine each in her mind’s eye: her paren
ts, Margaret as a baby, prom, Aunt Judith and Robert’s wedding, Stefan and Elena, their arms around each other.
Her heart ached. They should have come here together.
At the end of the upstairs hall was the door to her old bedroom. Part of Elena didn’t even want to go in. She remembered lying there with Stefan, how he would speed away when Aunt Judith approached so she wouldn’t get into trouble. It had been a more innocent time.
There were also the windows she’d peered out every morning, where she’d seen Stefan striding across the lawn. The secret space beneath her closet floor where she had hidden her diary. A hundred slumber parties, when she and Meredith and Bonnie, and Caroline, who had been her friend then, had giggled and shared secrets, a score of evenings before high school dances when they’d done their makeup together and talked about boys.
Memories of Damon landing on her bedroom window as a crow, more than once. He’d laid beside her on the bed, after escaping the Dark Dimension, when she’d been so happy just to realize that he was still alive.
Ready for a flood of memories, Elena turned the knob and went inside.
“Elena,” the voice was soft but unmistakable, full of love and longing.
“Stefan,” she said, and dropped the candle. The flame went out and left her in total darkness.
Strong arms circled her, and Elena let herself fall into them. She was surrounded by the familiar smell that meant Stefan—something green and growing, and just a touch of exotic spice. Tears ran down her cheeks. “Stefan,” she sobbed, and buried her head in his shoulder, wrapping her arms around him. He was shaking, crying, too, a gentle hand running through her hair.
“You’re not really here,” she whispered, clutching his strong, well-remembered arms, reaching up to touch his face.
And even though she had just been thinking about how Damon had been dead and returned and come back to her alive again, she knew that what she said was true. Stefan was solid in her arms, but no matter how hard she clutched at him, something in her, something she could feel was true told her: No. Not yours. Not anymore.
Stefan let out a long breath, and he held her tightly against him for one more moment, and then he let her go. “No,” he said softly, sorrowfully. “I’m only visiting, and we don’t have long. ”
Elena knelt and felt around on the floor for the candle. When her hands finally closed around it, she stood and dug the matches out of her purse to relight the flame.
When the candle was lit once more, she could see Stefan. He was there, watching her with his leaf-green eyes. She’d never thought she’d see them again.
“We tried,” she said, gasping. It seemed important that he know this. “Bonnie and I, we tried to reach you. And you weren’t anywhere. Do you mean to tell me that all I had to do was come here?”
