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“Okay, if I don’t have your email, will Carter have it?” he asks.
I think about it. The only time I’ve ever emailed Carter was from prison. “I doubt it. Here, can you write it down?”
“Sure,” he replies. “Go ahead.”
I rattle it off to him and he assures me I’ll have an email in a couple of days.
I smile, hoping I can help. What’s the use of coming over here to pay my dues if I can’t even attempt to maybe save one little boy’s life?
I flip my phone around in my hand and open Christa’s texts and read them again.
Christa:I hate you for leaving without saying goodbye.
Christa:I thought we had something, and you just left. I could have helped you through your pain, but you just left. You’re a fucking coward, Eric.
Christa:I’m sorry for my last text. You’re not a coward. I’m just hurting. I miss you so much. Can’t we talk?
I want so badly to reach out to her. Those texts were over three months ago. She’s got to be angry and cursing me for ghosting her, but I miss her so damn much I’m afraid if I reach out, she’ll cry and I can’t handle that. I’ll want to ditch the work I’m doing here and rush home to comfort her. I don’t want to do that. I have to stay strong and finish what I came here to do. It’s too late to help one little blue-eyed girl back in Colorado, but maybe I can make a difference here with some of these children. I’m glad the doc assigned me to help there.
I pull up my photo gallery on my original phone and stare at a photo of Christa and me with the mountains in the background. She’s smiling that big, beautiful smile of hers, and I look happy too. I never smiled like that in prison. Smiles were rare, and sometimes if a really good joke was told by another inmate, I’d laugh. Other than that, it was a miserable place—as it should be. I run my finger over the screen, wishing I could touch her. But I can’t. Not now. I contemplated early on contacting her and asking her to wait for me, to promise her weekly phone calls and texts or face-time calls if possible. But I realized that was a distraction I didn’t need. It wasn’t fair for me to ask that of her either. She needs to move on and find someone else. I can’t hold onto the hope that she’ll be there waiting for me when I get back. She deserves better and I deserve nothing, as badly as that reality crushes my heart and soul, I know it’s for the best.
Eleven
Christa
Taryn glares at me. “It’s freezing out here. Why did you drag me hiking? You hate exercise.”
“It’s not freezing, you baby. Maybe if you had some more meat on your bones.” I pinch her thigh through her yoga pants.
“You should talk. You’ve lost too much weight,” she comments as we trek up another stretch of rock. She wears a Columbia jacket I’m sure she’ll be shedding soon.
“I’m just not hungry,” I say with a shrug. While the weight loss has tapered off, I’d rather put a few pounds back on. “At least my double chin is gone.”
She snorts. “You never had one.”
“Yes, I did. Ever open your phone and the camera’s on selfie mode? If you haven’t, you’re lucky. My God, I thought Ursula the Sea Witch had hacked my phone! But it was just me!”
