My Fake Death Was The Punchline To His Cruel Joke Chapter 34
A year after the pro bono project launched, we received an invitation from Rhode Island.
A large community services organization was renovating a temporary housing facility and wanted Ortiz Design to bid on the project.
The site was less than two blocks from the Newport Yacht Club.
My assistant forwarded the email with a hesitant note: “Should we decline?”
I looked at the familiar coastline on the map.
It was the place where I had waited on a cold pier for three hours. The place where I had been thrown out a staff entrance. The place where I had stood in a beautiful church and believed I had finally found a home.
But Newport didn’t belong to Bennett.
And it didn’t belong to his friends.
“Prepare the proposal,” I wrote back.
Two weeks later, I flew back, not for a court date, but as Elena Ortiz, lead architect.
My palms were still damp as the plane descended.
As the car passed the pier, I found myself looking out the window.
There was no Bennett. No Camille. No circle of friends holding up their phones, waiting for the show to start.
Just the wind whipping the flags in the harbor and tourists lining up for coffee.
A city has no memory.
The only thing that had ever trapped me there was my own.
The project review was held at the community center.
A few people recognized me from the news and whispered among themselves. But the review board just opened my proposal.
“Why do you have two non-overlapping exit routes on every floor?”
“Because sometimes the person you’re escaping isn’t an outsider.”
“That will add to the budget.”