"I never agreed to any of it," I insist. "I just... whenever I saw you, I stood still. That was all.”
And, technically, what I’m tellin’ her is the truth. I stood still while she took her pictures. There was no discussion. Not at that time. She captured me in her camera and then I’d find something. A note stuffed in my jacket pocket or attached to my motorcycle handlebars with a rubber band. It went on like that for a whole year. The stories about him trickled out like that.
"You got what you wanted," Eleanor says. "And I got what I wanted."
I got what I wanted, all right.
An excuse. A way to justify this cravin’ I had for the outlaw life.
Eleanor's ghost moves closer to me. "The first time I saw you on that Honda Shadow, I thought he was back from the dead. You looked so much like him, it hurt to breathe, Legion."
I turn away from her, unable to bear the naked emotion in her eyes. This is what I never told Savannah.
How her mother loved a ghost, and saw him every time she looked at me.
Is this what's in store for Savannah if she and I stay with it. If we don't give up. If we make good on that pledge we said only with our eyes that first time we held hands.
Will I turn into my father, causing her to turn into Eleanor?
Or will she become something less?
Truth be told, it's the second one that scares me.
I don't want her to be something less.
I want her to be something more.
