C4 antho - Chamber Four

~112~ The Chamber Four Fiction Anthology
looked everywhere for them and when I couldn’t find them, I
assumed she burned them. It seems like something she’d do,
doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know.”
“No, of course not. Why would you?”
I began worrying the skin around my fingernails. “Anyway,
I thought you’d want them. I knew they were hers because
she wrote her name in the front.”
Eric didn’t register this evasion. He was muzzy with inebriation.
“She was only eighteen when we met. Yearning and
intense. The kind of student professors wait for and dread a
little. The material was difficult, but she thrived on the difficulty.”
“I wish I’d had the chance to know her better.”
His laugh was a strangled yelp. “You can reach her at the
poste restante.”
I smiled, baffled by the foreign words. I still wanted him
to think highly of me; I wanted to be able to think highly of
myself. “Come over for supper sometime. You and Vera.”
He rubbed his eyes. “Marvelous idea. Thank you. We
will.”
* * * *
Not long afterwards, Eric and Vera moved out. The same
uniformed movers arrived, but this time they made the trip
in reverse. They whisked the furniture down the stairs to the
van double-parked outside.
I told myself I had done the right thing, giving him the
journals. While many of the passages had to have caused
him pain, the pain would be resolved with time, whereas his