I was still staring at the open folder when Matteo spoke again, his tone calm but cutting through the silence like a blade.
He said, tapping a finger lightly on one of the docunts, "That is also the reason he was sent abroad right after graduation. It wasn’t to make him study. It was to send him away from everyone’s gaze."
For a mont, my brain could not process his words. Seconds passed by as the realization hit sharply and suddenly.
I felt my stomach drop.
This was the reason why he suddenly went abroad out of the blue. I thought to myself.
He continued in his steady voice, almost too casual for what he was saying, "His parents wanted the rumors to die down. Sending him away was their only way to cool things off."
I froze, his words echoing in my head.
So that was it.
His words fully confird my suspicion, which vanished the next second.
I rembered that year so vividly. It was like soone had just torn open a sealed box of old mories and poured them back into my chest.
I hadn’t even entered high school when I heard the news that Dave was leaving for England. I found out through my friend, who had heard it from her boyfriend, who just happened to be Dave’s friend.
I rember standing in front of Dave’s room wanting to confirm the news. Wanted to talk to him about it, but he never opened the door.
He kept trying to walk away from him which never happened before that. My fingers gripping his door handle. I could still feel that overwhelming feeling coming to the surface.
And when I asked Grandpa Albert, his tone flat and detached unusally, "Dave thinks it’ll be better for him to finish college there. I also thinks he needs a change of space."
Change of Space. Those words had haunted for weeks.
I had begged....literally begged everyone, especially him to not to go.
I rembered chasing him down the path that evening, my throat burning as I called his na. "Dave, please! Can’t you stay here? We can figure it out later..."
That ti he had just stopped, turned, and looked at with that unreadable expression of his. There was no anger in his face, no sadness either just...
Just emptiness.
"It’s already decided, Elena," he had said. And that was it.
He left two weeks later.
I didn’t go to the airport. I couldn’t.
I locked myself in my room that night, muffling my cries in a pillow so no one could hear. I rember that ache. The kind that sits in your chest for so long it becos part of you.
I thought he had gone to study, to build his life, to move forward. Now, sitting here in Matteo’s office, I realized it wasn’t opportunity that had taken him away, it was sha.
It was not a dream that had carried him across the ocean. It was a scandal.
I leaned back slowly in the chair, my mind spinning. "So... you’re saying his family sent him away just to protect him?"
Matteo nodded slightly, taking another slow drag of his cigar, "To protect him, and themselves, yes. The Morrises have always been about image. They couldn’t let their son’s na be dragged through the mud when one was already sent out. It was easier to buy silence and send him far away."
My throat went dry, "But... there was not any proof, right? There was no evidence that he actually..." I could not even finish the sentence as I could not even think of it.
"Killed her?" Matteo finished for , his eyes flicking up to . Of course, he did not have any problem fiishing it up.
"No. Nothing solid. Just whispers, eyewitness confusion, and a few pieces that never quite fit together, but it was enough to stain a reputation. In their world, that’s all it takes."
I looked down at the papers again. The headlines, the photos, the case summaries...all fragnts of a story I had not even known existed.
And now, everything started fitting together like pieces of a cruel puzzle.
Why he never talked about his school days.
Why he got distant every ti soone ntioned England.
Why he always hated caras.
My chest felt tight.
"I rember..." I started quietly, not even realizing I was speaking until the words ca out.
"When he left, I thought it was my fault. I thought maybe I had done sothing wrong. Maybe I wasn’t enough reason for him to stay."
Matteo didn’t interrupt, just kept watching , silent and patient.
"I even went to his parents, Grand parents," I continued, my voice trembling slightly at the mory.
"I even begged them not to send him. I told them he didn’t want to go, that he could finish college here, but they looked at like I was a foolish child who didn’t understand how the world worked. They didn’t even let finish. His mother said, ’Elena, we know what’s best for our son.’ in that ondescending tone."
I laughed softly almost bitterly. "What was best for him? Or what was best for them?"
The question hung heavy in the air, unanswered.
I rembered running ho that day, my shoes soaked in rain, my heart pounding in my chest. I tried to tell my parents that I wanted to study abroad too, that I didn’t want to stay behind while everyone else moved on.
My father had sighed deeply, rubbing his temples. "Your brother’s already studying overseas, Elena. We can’t afford another one."
I had argued, cried, pleaded, but nothing changed. They didn’t have the money, and I didn’t have the power.
So I stayed.
Or should I say the situation made stayed behind while he left away.
And I cried myself to sleep for nights after that, clutching a photo of him that I had secretly printed from one of our school events.
I had told myself he would co back for soday, that distance couldn’t really change anything.
But he never ca back... for years.
And when he finally did... he ca back for our engagent.
The irony of it made sothing ache deep inside .
I looked up at Matteo again, my voice unsteady. "All this ti, I thought I had lost him to ambition. I thought he went away because his family wanted him to have a better life, but all this... all of this was just them running from sothing ugly."
Matteo’s gaze softened, just a fraction as he said, "Sotis the ugliest truths hide behind the prettiest excuses."
I let out a shaky breath. "You seem to know a lot about hiding things."
He smiled faintly, not denying it, "We all do, Elena. So of us just hide them better."
The silence that followed wasn’t empty this ti. It was full...full of questions, mories, and realizations I didn’t know how to process.
The more I thought about it, the more it broke .
All those nights I stayed awake thinking about him, all those letters I never sent, all those years of wondering why he never called, never wrote, never said a single word to .
It was not because he had forgotten. It was because he couldn’t afford to rember.
The Morris family had erased his past, and I was part of the past they erased.
Matteo finally spoke again, his tone asured. "You look like soone who’s just realized she’s been living with a ghost."
I t his eyes, my voice low. "Maybe I have."
He didn’t say anything to that. He didn’t need to.
The truth was already sitting there between us, heavier than the folder on the desk.
I glanced down one last ti at the article. The picture of Clara, her bright smile frozen forever beside the boy I thought I knew. She was an intelligent girl who achieved several awards.
She was then given the title of "Golden Girl" because of the honor and respect she brought to our school.
For years, I had told myself I understood Dave.
That beneath his coldness, there was a reason, a wound I had not found yet, but now, looking at the evidence spread before , I wasn’t sure if I wanted to find it anymore.
Because what if that wound was not made by pain... but by guilt?
My hands were cold when I closed the folder again, pressing it shut as if I could sohow contain everything inside.
All those lies, the mories, the fragnts of the boy I once loved and the man I married. but even as I did, I knew nothing could contain what I had just learned.
And maybe Matteo was right.
Once you open the envelope, there’s no going back to pretending. I covered my head with my hands not able to process everything I just got to know.
This was big. Then a thought struck .
What if I used this information to get divorce from him, then?
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