Chapter 9 - The Years Between Us
I went back to school the following January.
Not because Dante paid for it.
Because Bellini’s adjusted my hours, Eli began covering part of the rent, and I finally completed the applications I had postponed for years.
Nina helped me find a local scholarship.
The first acceptance email arrived while I was carrying a crate of clean glasses.
I read it three times.
Then I sat on an overturned bucket in the kitchen and cried until the dishwasher handed me a paper towel.
“Good news?” he asked.
“The best.”
Training was harder than I remembered.
There were anatomy quizzes after late shifts, practical assessments, and mornings when I doubted I could learn one more thing.
Then I remembered myself on the mountain, guessing what to do because help had not arrived yet.
I wanted skills that reached farther than instinct.
Dante wrote once a month.
At first, I didn’t answer.
His letters contained no declarations.
He described books, prison work assignments, and the discomfort of learning how little control he had over an ordinary day.
He asked about Eli’s classes.
He never asked me to forgive him.
The fourth letter contained a page I read slowly.
I used to think regret was something you said after a consequence. I’m learning it has to affect what you do when no one is offering you anything for it.
I answered that one.
I told him about failing a practical assessment because I rushed.
He wrote back that he had made rushing look sophisticated for most of his adult life.
I laughed in the college library loudly enough to earn a warning.
Our correspondence grew carefully.
Some letters were serious.
Some were painfully ordinary.
I complained about a leaking sink. He described a terrible haircut. I told him Eli had fallen in love with a woman who corrected his grammar during arguments.
Dante said that sounded promising.
I visited after eight months.
The room was plain.
The chairs were uncomfortable.
He stood when he saw me, then seemed uncertain what to do with his hands.
“You cut your hair,” he said.
“So did you.”
“Less successfully.”
I smiled.
For a while, we talked about nothing dangerous.
Then I asked the question I had brought with me.
“Do you miss being powerful?”
He looked down.
“Yes.”
The honesty hurt less than a polished denial would have.
“What do you do with that?”
“Remind myself what the power cost other people.”
“Does that work?”
“Some days better than others.”
I nodded.
That was an answer I could believe.
Outside prison, restitution moved slowly. Assets were sold. Legitimate companies were reorganized under independent leadership. People with documented claims received payments through the established process.
Money did not restore every lost business.
It still belonged where it should have gone years earlier.
Vanessa and Adrian received lengthy sentences after separate hearings.
Their appeals became matters I could know about without following every development.
Eventually, I stopped searching their names.
That felt like recovering a room in my own mind.
Eli graduated.
I completed my training and began working for a county ambulance service.
My first overnight shift brought rain.
I stood beside the ambulance bay until my partner, Jo, asked if I was coming.
For a moment, I heard the tree cracking again.
Then I climbed into the passenger seat.
“I’m coming.”
Dante remained in prison through two more winters.
I visited when I wanted to.
I missed visits when I needed to.
He accepted both.
By the time his release date approached, I had built a life that could stand without him.
That was when I finally understood what I wanted.
Not to rescue him again.
Not to prove love could make consequences disappear.
I wanted to find out whether the people we had become could share an ordinary future.
I told him during our last visit before his release.
He listened without interrupting.
Then he said, “I’d like that.”
“No grand gestures.”
“Understood.”
“No buying my workplace a new ambulance.”
He looked offended.
“That was a very specific restriction.”
“Dante.”
“All right.”
I laughed.
When the visit ended, he stood on the other side of the table.
May you like
For the first time, the future between us did not look like a debt.
It looked like a question we were both free to answer.
