To Professor, With Love (Forbidden Men 2)

CHAPTER THIRTHY-THREE

"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end." - Gilda Radner

~ASPEN~

I was hollow. An empty shell.

Staring down at the graves of both of my parents, I wondered why I wasn’t crying, why I hadn’t shed one tear over their deaths.

Next to me, Rita sniffed into a tissue and dabbed her eyes. I reached out and patted her arm, trying to offer a measure of comfort, but how did I offer anything when I had nothing? Felt nothing?

The past few days had been a complete blur. After “resigning” from my position at Ellamore, I’d gone home and packed a bag, ready to leave town for a few days to, I don’t know, find myself. Recalibrate my life. Make plans for the future.

Hide from Noel.

But my housekeeper had called when I was stuffing a handful of jeans into my luggage. And now my biggest fear had come true. My parents had died before telling me they loved me or even showing they cared. I knew I should’ve felt destroyed, lost, alone, hopeless. But no. Nothing. There was just a big, blank void, a vacancy where they’d never filled my heart.

I’d been braced to hear about my father. In the hospital with pneumonia, losing his leg to diabetes, I knew this fate was most likely coming for him. But that wasn’t how he’d died at all.

Mother had actually been driving him home from the hospital when they’d had a head-on collision on the freeway. Both dead. Instantly.

Shocked much? Oh, yeah. I was definitely in a state of utter shock. Maybe that’s why I was so numb. Or maybe I was just a heartless shrew. Maybe Mallory and Richard Kavanagh had rubbed off and I could never feel anything again.

But then I thought of Noel, and I knew that wasn’t true. Because just from drawing forth his face in my mind, I was no longer numb. I was aching and broken.

My parents might not have ever shown me love, but I did know love now. I knew how it felt to find someone worth living for, to risk everything for that love, and to sacrifice everything for it. It was beautiful and amazing. So I no longer craved it from the two bodies lying in this cold, hard ground. They could take their brand of love with them, wherever they went.

I tossed a rose into each open grave and turned away, ready to be finished with this. Only a dozen other people were present at the cemetery. I recognized colleagues of Richard’s and Mallory’s—Zach’s father stood near the back—but that was it. No friends, no other family. Just work ties.

A rustling came behind me, and I knew Rita was hurrying to catch up with me. I slowed enough for her to reach my side, then I hooked my arm through hers, and we made our way to the black ride awaiting us.

“Am I an awful person, Rita?” I wondered aloud.

Warm fingers surrounded mine and squeezed hard. “Why would you think such a thing, child?”

“They raised me,” I said. “They kept me healthy and clothed me, put a house over my head. They paid for my education and helped me get a good start on life. I wouldn’t have anything if it weren’t for them. So shouldn’t I owe them more than this? Shouldn’t I...mourn?”

“Oh, honey. You’re just in shock. Denial is a very real stage in grieving.”

I shook my head. “No. No. I know they’re gone. I know...” I would never see them again. Stopping twenty feet from the car while it was still just the two of us, I turned to her. “I’m relieved,” I finally confessed. “I spent my entire life, worried about disappointing them, striving to gain their love. And now...now I’m free. I lost my job this week, and my biggest fear was how I was going to tell them. But I don’t have to worry about that now. I never have to worry about winning their approval again.”

Rita clucked her tongue and pulled me in for a hug. “This is my fault. I should’ve nurtured you more. I never should’ve let them intimidate me into keeping my distance. You were always such a good obedient girl, and all you ever needed was a hug, just a little compassion.”

“No. You did fine. I understood why you couldn’t do much. And I’ll always remember the times you did do something.”

Grasping my shoulders, Rita stared up at me from pale, watery eyes. “They never treated you right. I don’t know how you turned out as well as you did.”

Finally, I had to blink back some emotion. This was my true mother, right here. And she’d just given me all the parental approval I’d ever needed. “Thank you, Rita.”

After we returned to the house, my parents’ lawyer came to read the will. Rita was left a thousand dollars for every year of service she’d worked for them, and then they’d left the rest of their financial worth to the university where they’d both worked.

As those words were read aloud, the cold inside me only grew deeper. Rita gasped and covered her mouth. “No,” she breathed, turning to me with guilt in her eyes. “But...but what about Aspen?”

The lawyer winced. “I asked them about her when they had these drawn up. But they said they’d already given her all the tools she needed to survive. Their money was of no consequence to her.”

I wasn’t even that surprised. Still hollow, I merely lifted my chin and answered, “They were right. I don’t need their money.” It didn’t even matter that I’d been planning to ask them for a loan until I found a new job. They really had given me all the tools I needed to survive. I could do this. Somehow.

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