Courageous Love - Jerry Cole Page 0,35

still be true but...I have to at least try to stay right?”

I waited and still heard no response. Maybe my hunch was wrong and he was somewhere else.

“Sorry I’m so stupid. I should have tried to figure it out first before doing what was easiest.”

A long slow creak made my head snap up and follow the noise. It was somewhere on the first floor. I started searching and eventually found a bookcase that was swung out from the wall like a door. Of course there was a secret room in this old home in the middle of a graveyard.

The space was rather small but I found my way in, albeit a little hunched over. Inside was a small room, a little bigger than a closet with large shutters on three of the walls. It was lit by a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and inside was Cecil and a small bed filled with soft looking blankets.

“Cecil…” face to face with him again I wasn’t sure what to say.

“My parents showed me this room,” Cecil began, not looking at me, just looking at the shutters. “They said my grandparents added it in when they were younger. I always hid in here when I was afraid or sad. It’s kind of silly to keep doing it as an adult but I never broke the habit.”

“It’s not silly,” I said quietly. “Look Cecil, I have to apologize.”

“So do I,” Cecil added in quickly.

“What for?” I asked.

“I spied on you and Stacy; I was just coming over to ask Stacy if the Wi-Fi was working for her but when I heard your conversation I just kept listening? It wasn’t right.”

“I forgive you, really it was nothing. I need to apologize for giving up so easily. I’m so stupid.”

“Stop!” Cecil said so firmly and loudly, louder than he had ever been. My mouth instantly shut. “Stop saying you’re stupid. You aren’t.”

“But—”

“No.” Cecil shook his head furiously. “You keep looking down on yourself, thinking you aren’t worth anything. But that’s all your family’s words in your head. Adam you organized a whole group of teenagers into getting their parents to like me again. You came up with that plan all on your own.”

“I had all of your help, and Stacy was the one who found the document in the library,” I tried to insist.

“You were the one who led us all Adam, and you were the one to ask her to look for something like that. You knew exactly how to cheer me up after I locked myself away in here the first time. If Beth is telling the truth, and she is, then you are one of the quickest people to pick up on being a florist for someone with zero experience. Every time you say you’re stupid it hurts me because I care about you so much. I don’t want to see you hating yourself.”

“It just always felt that way,” I admitted. How often did my dad say I was stupid for throwing my life away with a “useless” art degree. That I was stupid for not thinking about the business more? Even my siblings, evil twins that they were, expected me to figure out how to stop our father. That meant, even though they never said it or disagreed with my father, that I wasn’t useless. They weren’t afraid of me taking part of the company and ruining it, they were afraid of me taking over part of the company and being better than them.

“You are smart Adam. Don’t let your terrible family make you think otherwise. I only know a little about what’s going on but I knew you can stop it if you put your mind to it.”

“Cecil?” I asked, my gaze wandering.

“Uh, yes?” His voice softened again, his speech over.

“Do these shudders move?”

“They’re kind of rusty?” Cecil sounded so confused. “I’ve never gotten them open.”

“Can I try to open them?” I asked.

“Sure?”

I’m sure he wanted to ask why but I was motivated. I headed over to the shudders and very carefully, my arms straining against the years they had been closed, and very slowly opened them. Once they were all open, I stepped back to take in the sight.

Cecil gasped. “I had no idea. From the outside, with the shudders, they just looked like walls.”

In front of us were three windows, perfectly facing the home my grandparents bought on the hill and their own glass room.

I stared out the glass and felt a grin spread over my face. “I