To be a Wildflower

Chapter 23

It was six in the morning when Elizabeth wrapped up her room and embraced the cozy cloud ceiling room, which felt like her own paradise. Her eyes rested on the two brown envelopes on the small wooden table at the corner of the room for the girls, where she had watched Savannah swoon over the blue leathered poetry book and gaze at her polaroids with wild curiosity. Elizabeth did not know how she found it in her to leave her favourite Polaroid of Porto Cesareo for Savannah as a reminder for her to make her own discoveries. Elizabeth was obliged to write a few lines from the most complicated poem that Savannah had decided to take to heart. She knew the girl was going to be trouble for Vivian and she could only laugh in admiration.

"T'was brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe."

-find your own world, you're not far-

Love, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth smiled and turned to the scrappy iPod she had left for Sage. Elizabeth's father had gifted it to her on her thirteenth birthday and it was a childhood treasure that she carried with her and did not have the courage to let go, until now. Elizabeth knew it was not the best way to depart, but she was restrained and for once she didn't want to break free, not this time.

When Elizabeth chose to write the letters, she felt the evanescent power left after every word written and though she wasn't feeling right at all, it felt okay during the hours she spent writing the letters last night. There was something about Hope's letter that remained within Elizabeth, that made her believe in words unspoken, but written. It was electric and magical, permanent.

The plane ticket Elizabeth had bought said she had another four more days left in Chelseaville, but using the money she had stacked from the diner shifts and that last couple of hundreds from the Starbucks shifts, which happened to be good money for an escapist, she bought another ticket. She did not want anyone to know of her departure hence she trusted the secret with Vivian to keep it to herself until she had left off to the airport.

Elizabeth sat on the flora patterned couch of Vivian's, with her hands dug deep into the pockets of her trench coat, and while she waited Vivian walked in through the backyard with Davis beside her. She leapt off her seat in shock.

"Hey, it's alright," Vivian said calmly, "he's the only one who knows." She said and disappeared into the kitchen.

Elizabeth waved at Davis sheepishly. She didn't have many chances to truly know Davis, but she could see it clearly that he was a good father and a husband, and an even better person who made her feel belonged in a place she was foreign to.

"Sneakin' away are you?" He asked smiling.

"I'm sorry, but it feels like the only option."

"There's always more than one option," he said in his usual tone of positivity and humbleness, "but I trust you know what you're doing."

"I hope so too," she said.

"I can't say I won't miss the breakfast club," he shrugged sadly, "Vivian's never gonna let us in that dining room, until she meets someone comfortable enough to sit down for breakfast with."

Elizabeth laughed at the memory, the heaviness in her dissipating for a sweet second.

"Oh, I don't doubt that," she said, "thank you for being cool with all the stuff that happened."

Davis smiled and nodded at her reassuringly.

"Keep the girls bright and bubbly for me?"

"Always," he smiled brightly, "I don't think they blended quite easily with any other guest here before, and mostly, um thank you for encouraging' Vivian to take off the edge. I don't know how you did it but um thank you." He sounded relieved and Elizabeth could only smile in return when she had no idea what he was talking about.