He Left Me in the Rain for My Best Friend Chapter 08

He Left Me in the Rain for My Best Friend Chapter 08

After school started, my roommates and classmates were kind.

I sent my mother messages every day about what happened.

I often dreamed that my mother replied from another space.

In the dream, she anxiously asked why I couldn’t see her messages.

There was a woman at the second dining hall who sold baked pasta.

From behind, she looked especially like my mother.

I ate there for a week straight.

She started to recognize me.

When there were fewer people and she wasn’t busy, she would chat with me.

“Elena, the usual today?”

I nodded.

She pulled a piece of chocolate from her pocket and secretly handed it to me.

“I won this in a bet. I don’t like sweets. You eat it.”

My eyes instantly burned.

I couldn’t even say thank you properly.

She noticed and nervously asked whether I had been wronged or missed home.

I nodded.

“I miss my mom.”

She touched my head in silent comfort.

Halfway through my meal, I got a call from Mrs. Sterling.

She screamed and sobbed hysterically.

“Elena Brooks, was it you? Did you make my son die? You killed him!”

I froze.

My fork dropped to the floor.

Caleb Sterling had killed himself.

He jumped from the building where his father worked.

Rumors about why the city valedictorian had died by suicide spread everywhere.

Most people thought it was because of his parents’ high-pressure education.

Otherwise, why would he do something like that two months after starting college?

Only we knew.

He had been trapped in depression from guilt and remorse.

That night, I received a scheduled email from Caleb Sterling.

“Elena,

I should be completely dead by now. I hope so. I don’t want to fall wrong and spend the rest of my life paralyzed in bed.

I can’t face myself, you, or my parents.

I went to your mother’s grave and bowed to her. Then I left right away. She probably didn’t want to see me.

Goodbye. This time, it’s really goodbye forever.

Have you gained a little weight?

I’m sorry, Elena.”

His forced light tone made me feel sick.

Mrs. Sterling came to my school once to make a scene.

She also called the police and accused me of encouraging her son to die by suicide.

But they found no trace of contact between Caleb and me.

Then she accused me of theft and extortion, demanding that I return the money they gave me.

Their shamelessness almost made me laugh.

I took out the voluntary gift agreement Caleb Sterling had written.

“Your son loved me enough to die. Do you really want to make him restless underground?”

The farce ended with me getting slapped.

During winter break, I ran into Ivy Harper at the supermarket.

She saw me too, but moved her eyes away like I was a stranger.

“Ivy, do you want this?”

Mrs. Sterling came over from the shelves with a box of cheesecake.

The moment she saw me, her smile vanished.

Ivy held Mrs. Sterling’s arm.

“Mom, we’ve bought almost everything. Let’s go home. I’m tired.”

Mrs. Sterling nodded.

“Okay.”

I found the whole thing absurd.

But whoever they wanted as a daughter, or as a mother, had nothing to do with me.

On Christmas, I took the apple pie I made and went to the cemetery to eat with my parents.

“Mom, I’m so clumsy. It doesn’t look good, and a lot of it cracked. Please just make do.”

I chewed the pie and looked up at the sky.

After the snow, the sky was spotless blue.

A plane flew overhead.

“Mom, I never got to take you on a plane.”

Many years later, I took my daughter on a plane for the first time.

She asked why I bought two extra tickets.

I said, “Mommy made a promise to your grandparents.”

“Mommy, I want to hear Grandpa and Grandma’s story.”

I smiled and said okay.

She had heard it many times.

Just like me when I was little, she never got tired of it.