His Lens Never Had Room For Me Chapter 05

His Lens Never Had Room For Me Chapter 05

Thirteen hours later, the plane landed smoothly at Fairbanks International Airport.

At arrivals, Graham Whitlock, the editor-in-chief of the magazine, personally took my suitcase.

He handed me a black equipment case.

Inside was a brand-new, unopened Hasselblad medium-format camera and a full set of top-tier astrophotography lenses.

“Elena, welcome back to the team,” Graham said.

I took the equipment case from him.

The joints in my fingers throbbed faintly from the cold, but I held on tight.

At the same time, in Briarhaven.

Everett pushed open the apartment door.

The place was dead silent. There was no lingering warmth of a home-cooked meal in the air, only the stale chill of rooms that had sat empty.

He switched on the living room light.

On the entryway cabinet, the three transparent glass jars were arranged neatly in a row.

They were empty.

Not a single folded paper star remained inside.

Beside the jars lay a key to the front door.

Everett froze for a second.

Then he strode into the bedroom.

The closet door was half open.

The two rows of clothes that had belonged to me were gone.

In the bathroom, my toothbrush, towels, and skincare had all been cleared away without a trace.

Everett pulled out his phone and dialed my number.

A cold automated voice came through the receiver. “The number you have dialed is no longer in service.”

He hung up, opened the messaging app, and sent a text.

A glaring “failed to send” notification appeared on the screen.

Yanking his tie loose in frustration, he immediately dialed Vivian Brooks, my childhood best friend.

The phone rang for a long time before she picked up.

“Where is Elena?” Everett’s voice carried obvious anger.

“What kind of tantrum is she throwing now? She blocked every way I had to reach her.”

Vivian laughed softly on the other end.

“Everett Hale, you usually don’t even care when she has a fever. What made you suddenly find time to look for her today?”

“I don’t have time for your sarcasm. Just because I didn’t give her a shout-out in my speech, she decided to disappear without a word?” Everett yanked his tie loose.

“Disappear?”

Vivian’s voice turned cold.

“Everett, Elena didn’t disappear. She left you.”

“Did you see the three empty jars by your front door?”

Everett turned to look at the glass jars.

“I saw them. She dumped the trash inside.”

“Trash?” Vivian’s voice rose sharply.

“Those were one thousand and ninety-six stars she folded by hand over five years, on every night you went into the mountains to shoot, every night you didn’t answer her texts.”

“Inside every single one, she wrote the things she cared too much and feared too much to send you.”

Everett’s entire body went rigid.

“A few days ago, she burned them all,” Vivian said.

“Impossible,” Everett snapped.

“Check the trash can on your balcony. There should still be black ash at the bottom if no one took it out.”

Everett strode to the balcony and yanked the lid off the black metal trash can.

A thick layer of paper ash coated the bottom.

Among the ashes, there was half a piece of brown paper that had not fully burned where the scorched fragments of my name were still faintly visible.

Everett stared at the ashes, and the phone slipped from his hand, hitting the floor.

He crouched down and reached into the trash can to grab the paper ash.

It crumbled into powder between his fingers.

The doorbell rang suddenly.

Sienna stood outside with two enormous pink suitcases.

“Mr. Hale, I changed the flights. We can fly to Alaska tonight,” Sienna said, her face bright with excitement.

Everett stood up and looked at her in the doorway.

He thought of the itinerary pinned to the whiteboard.

He thought of the note: [Photograph Sienna under the aurora.]

His dry throat moved.

“Let’s go.”

Everett picked up his own equipment case.

He did not believe that the woman who had once locked away even her camera for him could truly walk away so cleanly.

He thought this was only another round of tug-of-war.

He thought that once he came back, once he offered me a few soft words, I would return to his side as I had for the past five years, carrying a cup of warm water in my hands.

Everett closed that front door behind him.

He just did not know that the light inside that apartment would never turn on for him again.