1927: Redemption

Spent some FAMILY time

“When our words fail us when we see so much more than can ever be explained, that sense of love that hits us in a nanosecond... that's when our emotional intelligence leaps far beyond that which speech can ever accomplish. That's when we feel safe with another, love them for as "forever" as we are and will be. And it's that love that wakes us, shows us our best selves, opens such wide vistas of imagination and reality combined.”

2021-DECEMBER-FLORIDA

“It’s not just Martinez’s Ancestral Cemetery…. This graveyard was built for three families Martinez, Jonathan and-”

“Lewis,” completed Adeline for Ace.

Instead of saying anything rather rude in response, like she was expecting him to do, he just remained quiet. In fact, he remained quiet for quite a while. He stood up and walked over towards a tree and took out his handkerchief.

Adeline kept quiet and just studied his actions, but a question arose in her mind: What is he doing?

With the use of that handkerchief, Ace rubbed the tree’s trunk hard for ten seconds to be exact. Adeline could not get a glimpse of what he was doing, but she had an idea that it might be important for him.

After some time, he had put back in the handkerchief and touched the place he rubbed off, gently.

His lips were pressed together in a tight line and his face was set in a hard expression as he sat back down beside her. And maybe it was just her imagination or complete hopelessness, but he might have been sitting a little closer to her this time.

“You know what they say about destiny?” Adeline blurted out of the blue, starting over at Ace.

Ace gave her one of his ‘looks’, one of his eyebrows raised. “Enlighten me.”

“You can't save someone from their destiny, from what they were created for; what you can do is make it easier for them, bring more joy, less pain. You can walk some of their path with them, you can protect them from the demons who would end their mission too soon. So, above all, be a friend, be kind, and love all the stronger when it hurts to do so... for in those moments is the measure of who you truly are, the key to your own mission, the answer to who you are and whom you serve.”

She felt her face radiating heat like a lamp after those incredibly stupid words came out of her mouth, she was half expecting Ace to burst out laughing and call her a lunatic or something, but he did not. She watched him cautiously out of the corner of her eye, waiting for him to say something that would make her want to bury herself under a rock.

“You know what they say about wolves?” He asked looking at her to which she shook her head in negation, and he continued, saying, “They spend their entire lives searching for their mate, that perfect somebody. And they keep looking and looking for when they finally find them, they spend the rest of their lives together until one of them dies, but sadly humans are not capable of loving like that,” he finally said as he leaned back against the huge tree, his arms crossed over his chest.

Okay, so that was the last thing she had been expecting to hear him say.

“I don't think that's true,” Adeline said slowly, biting her lips. “Maybe people just never find their mates.”

Ace turned to her with an exaggerated look of fascination on his face. “Have you found your mate, Adeline?” and that was the first time he took her name without her last name.

Her ears rose, but she kept her cool and blurted, “N-No,” her face turning even redder when a certain someone occupied her mind.

“Right,” Ace agreed sarcastically.

Adeline scowled at him and shoved him off the stone.

So, maybe, things were not entirely perfect between them, and maybe she had a little more time to know what had happened between Archer Lewis’, Jonathans’ and her family, but for now, it was a start, right?

Spending some time in each other's company for an hour and not ending up yelling at each other?

Yes, that was indeed a start for Adeline and Ace, who IS her family, fortunately. And, she would definitely make him understand this as his sister.

Seeing the time, “Let’s go.” Said Ace and Adeline nodded.

While they got up and made their way toward the exit, Ace turned back to look at the tree’s trunk, shaking his head he walked ahead and Adeline took time to register the letters that were engraved on it, and those were:

A.K.J

They looked like initials of someone's name, were these his initials? Thought Adeline while she followed Ace.

Maybe. But, Ace had said that this was not his real name, well, he sounded like Ace was not his real name.

Ugh!!

Anything could happen in his case, thinking that Adeline trudged behind him as he hit the pebbles from his foot in his way.

After accompanying Adeline to her apartment, Ace left. Their entire journey from the graveyard to her apartment went in complete silence. None of them uttered a single word as they both were drowned in their own thoughts, she was planning on doing something when she got back home, and Ace was entirely a different case.

It was reminiscing for him to be at the place where he had not been able to go for the last seventeen years of his life. That place always reminded him of his Dad, he was there in that place for the last rites of his father who was brutally murdered by a friend.

With those thoughts, Ace left her apartment as he knew she was completely safe under a certain someone's eye on her.

.

.

.

Adeline felt like a stalker.

Okay, strike that, she was a stalker. There was no excuse for what she was doing, but at this point, she was running out of options. She could not afford to pussyfoot around with Ace. She has been down to eleven days now. Sure, that probably seemed like a lot of time to other people, but to her, that was barely enough time for her to do what she needed.

All she knew about Ace so far was that his father died at eleven- TALIA’s husband, his grandfather was a psycho, he had a desire to live like a hermit.

She could not even begin to understand what Ace had been through.

Hell, she didn't even want to.

It seemed so much more awful underneath the surface, and she was not sure she could handle it. There was this large portion of her mind that was trying to convince herself that Ace’s grandfather was entirely the reason as to why he was the way he was. It would be a cop-out of the worst degree, but it seemed entirely reasonable.

No, there was definitely something else going on that he was not eager to admit. She felt awful, prying into his private life, which he obviously wanted to keep a secret, but right then, she could not exactly find any other way around it.

But, was keeping that secret a secret worth it?

Sitting with her cup of hot chocolate on her desk and dropped into her computer chair with an exasperated sigh. She felt bad about doing this, but what could she do?

Adeline was now desperate to know about everything!

Flipping open the life of her laptop, she waited impatiently for it to boot up. Once everything was up and running, Abe pulled up the internet and typed in Google.

After it was loaded, she started gnawing on her lip while her fingers were poised above the keys. She was not sure if she could do this. But she had to.

Adelaide didn't have a choice, did she?

Blowing out another sigh, she quickly typed in the few words that would hopefully make this entire situation much clearer.

Robert Wyatt Jonathan, Crestview City.

Will she be able to know what Ace was hiding?

Whose initials were they?