“I don’t think turtles have very interesting lives.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s okay to have a hard shell,” North said. “Not okay to hide in it when you’re so young.”
“You’ve been at Twelve Oaks for twenty years now,” I reminded him, my tone defensive. “Isn’t that hiding?”
“I lived a lot before I came here,” he said.
“So have I.” Pain tightened my throat.
North settled a hand on my shoulder. “Sometimes you have to go through the crap to find the good stuff, you know? Shit makes the flowers grow.”
I couldn’t help smiling past a wash of tears.
“And based on that garden of yours, Liv,” North continued, “you do know how to make flowers grow.”
I rolled my eyes. “Thank you, O Wise and Profound One.”
He gave me one of his rare grins and tweaked my earlobe. “Find out who you are and what you want, Liv. That’s all I’m saying. Now go restock the tomatoes.”
I did. And I thought about what he said. I didn’t come to any immediate conclusions or make any plans, but as summer eased into fall and the commune’s children began returning to school, with some of the older teenagers going off to college, I had that old, all-too-familiar sense of getting left behind.
I wrote to Aunt Stella and asked if I could come back for a few months while I got enrolled at a community college. Maybe, just maybe, I could try again.
One afternoon North and I went to the deserted beach. We sat on the coarse sand, cold salty wind whipping around us, low waves spilling against the shore. North looked out at the ocean, the sand peppered with driftwood and seaweed.
“Try not to come back,” he said. “I want to hear from you, but don’t write too often.”
I didn’t have to ask why North wanted me to make a clean break. He knew that the only way I’d move forward again was if I no longer had a place to hide. I knew that too, even though my heart constricted at the thought of never seeing Twelve Oaks again.
“I’m scared,” I confessed.
“Yeah.”
I picked up a piece of driftwood and brushed the bits of sand from it. We sat in silence for a long time.
“You’re lucky, you know,” North said.
“How?”
“It’s your name, a part of you. The reminder of what you should do. What we all should do. It’s both the easiest and hardest thing in the world.”
I shrugged, chalking that statement up to another of North’s weird philosophical remarks. Two weeks later, after I’d packed up my car and said goodbye to everyone at Twelve Oaks, I hugged North and tried not to cry.
“I’m going to miss you,” I said.
“Nah.” He patted the back of my head. “Go on.”
Even so, his voice got a little choked up as he gave me directions to get back on the highway. He stepped away, watching me start the car and drive toward the gate surrounding the property. When I looked into the rearview mirror, I saw him raise both his hands in farewell.
I drove away from Twelve Oaks past fog-shrouded hills, the blue-gray swath of the ocean, gnarled cypress trees. Toward the highway, the unknown, my future once again. And then I finally understood.
Olivia… Liv… Live.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Dean
May 15
m so mad I could spit.” Frances Hunter glares at me from the doorway of my office, her arms crossed and her eyes blazing.
I take a few more books from the shelf and put them in a box. Because my home office is small, I’ve kept most of my academic stuff at King’s for the past few years. Books line the walls, the filing cabinet is stuffed with papers, and there are a million articles, office supplies, souvenirs. Even a plant that Liv once gave me to “liven up the place because really, Dean, it’s like a mausoleum in here.”
“Would you please reconsider this foolishness?” Frances snaps.
I take the framed photo of Liv from my desk and put it in the box along with a few of her drawings that I’d stuck to my computer.
“The chancellor has my resignation letter, Frances.”
“I’ll tell him it was a horrible mistake, that you were hit on the head and wrote that letter when you weren’t thinking straight.”
I stop to look at her. Affection and regret both twist inside me.
“I’m sorry, Frances. I had to end it.”
“Along with your career?”
I shrug. “I’ll find something else. You’ll give me a great recommendation, right?”
Frances glowers at me. “I’m not giving you any recommendation. I’ll be damned if some other university gets to have you when I can’t.”
“Now you just sound jealous.”
“I am jealous. I hired you. If I hadn’t, King’s would never have gotten the benefit of all your renown. You started the Medieval Studies program! I knew I should have pushed harder to get you fast-tracked for tenure.”
“Not even tenure could have saved me from this,” I tell her, which is the plain truth. I’m not sure anything could have saved me from this.
“Stop clearing out your office,” Frances orders. “You’re on faculty until your resignation goes into effect.”