The last few weeks had been a whirlwind, Aunt Rose left for New York, Graham left to get his name in lights and my mom was laid to rest. I didn't feel the hatred that I'd had a couple of weeks ago. I'd found peace even though Stuart was still out there. The police came to the hotel and I thought that it was with good news, but it was the same old story.
If we could think of anything to help them with their investigation. If they thought that a journalist and a teenager could do better than law enforcement, then I struggled to find their purpose in life. My life anyway.
I took a deep breath as I packed what little I had in a small suitcase, getting ready for a car to take me to the airport and on a flight to Boston. It was as if every little detail had been thought about and it made me even more nervous. But I said that I would give it a chance and that's exactly what I in-tended to do.
I hated the idea of not saying bye to Abe. He asked when I was leaving, and I told him that I would be here when he came back from visiting his dad. I knew that I wouldn't be, but I'd said bye so many times lately that I was a coward and chickened out of doing it once again. Totally selfish, but I didn't know where I was going or what I was going to do next.
Sure, I could get to this academy and everything would work out. Or I could end up going to New York. One thing that was for sure, I was never coming back here. Abe and I were over before we even began and the heartache of missing my neighborhood and my two best friends were bad enough without having to add potential boyfriend to the list.
"You sure, you don't want to call him?" Ava asked me one more time as I stood at the door like a lost lamb.
Was I really doing this?
Just going to Boston, a place that I'd never been to be-fore and never thought about going to? f**k, everything about this felt wrong and then right at the same time.
I was leaving my friends, and memories of my mom. Someone who would have comforted me in the past and now all I had to feel near to her was a headstone. I'd buried two women that I loved most in the world in the last few weeks and it just felt too much.
I had to get the hell away from here. But I didn't want to be away from them.
"Ava, I don't know what I'm going to do without you guys being there."
She cried, "I know, and we hate you going there."
Teresa squeezed me. "I wish that you would just stay here. I hate the idea of you going so far, girl. Alone. We love you. You know that, right? We do love you."
I nodded my head or tried to as my two best friends in the whole world squeezed me. The idea of not seeing them again started to dawn on me. Sure, we could chat on w******p, Video at times, but as for the small hug that we were doing right now? I had no idea when or if we would ever do that again.
Holidays.
What was going to happen then?
Would I stay in the academy?
I'd be the only girl that didn't have parents to stay with.
Fuck! I was an orphan. Something that I'd read about in Oliver Twist and someone that I'd never met. I'd never met someone that was an orphan and yet I was one right now.
My heart started to beat out of control as I hugged them even tighter.
I confessed, "I don't want to go."
I shook my head, as I repeated it over and over again.
Both of their dark eyes looked at mine as they said in unison, "Don't!"
I felt as if I'd had a grand plan in the space of two sec-onds. "I could stay here with you?" I said to Teresa and she nodded her head like a bobbing doll.
"Yes. Yes!"
The driver walked up to me, and, as if he'd brought me back to reality the fact that I'd made a promise to Aunt Rose came back like a flash of lightening.
"Ms. Harris we need to get going. Otherwise, you'll miss your flight," the driver said, the one that turned up at the house to pick me up to drive me to the airport. I didn't get it. I was going to the academy, one that I'd never heard off and Mom had no money when she died, yet she'd managed to ar-range for a driver, the academy and my flight to Boston?
I should have asked more questions, but I was scared about what I'd find out.
Did I have some secret relative that no one knew about?
Maybe?
Secrets and lies, that seemed to be the theme of our family. I used to think that we were an open book that I knew everything that was going on in my little family's lives. But it seemed that I knew nothing and that was why I had to say bye to my friends and get on that flight.
I had to find out about the academy and the mystery behind it. Some part of me felt that Mom had faked her death and maybe she was alive and taking care of me somehow. But I'd seen her body in the coffin, she was dead for real and I'd been watching too many movies and reading too many romance suspense novels.
Mom was dead and this was her last gift for me. I just had to figure out why?