Chapter 27 - The Girl Who Wanted to Leave
Anya Petrov asked to speak with me after the advanced class.
She was fifteen, disciplined, and so determined that she sometimes looked angry while standing still.
Her mother worked evenings at a nursing home. Her father drove airport shuttles. Anya arrived early, stayed late, and repaired her own slippers with stitches smaller than mine.
She stood in the office doorway holding a letter.
“I got an audition.”
I smiled.
“Where?”
She named a prestigious private academy.
For a moment, joy moved through me without complication.
Then she handed over the packet.
The academy wanted her to attend a summer intensive.
There would be travel expenses, accommodation, and fees.
The scholarship covered part.
Not all.
“I know,” she said before I spoke. “It’s expensive.”
“Have you talked with your parents?”
“Yes.”
“What do they think?”
“That we should ask questions.”
I nodded.
“Wise people.”
She looked relieved.
Then she added, “The recruiter said I should stop taking classes here before the audition.”
I looked up.
“Why?”
“He said your school isn’t serious enough.”
The words landed.
I kept my face still.
Anya watched me.
“He said you’re famous for a story. That isn’t the same as being a teacher.”
There were many things I wanted to say.
About the recruiter.
About prestige.
About the way some institutions convinced children that gratitude required contempt for wherever they began.
Instead, I asked to see the exact correspondence.
The statement about leaving appeared in an email.
Not as a formal requirement.
As advice from one representative.
That difference mattered.
We would verify what the academy actually required.
Anya shifted her weight.
“Are you angry?”
“A little.”
“At me?”
“No.”
She exhaled.
I understood then that she had come expecting a price.
Praise in exchange for loyalty.
Training in exchange for staying.
The same bargain I kept refusing for myself.
I placed the papers on the desk.
“If you choose to leave, I will help you prepare.”
She stared.
“You will?”
“Yes.”
“Even if he’s right?”
I considered that.
“If there are things you can learn elsewhere, that doesn’t make what you learned here worthless.”
Her eyes filled.
She wiped them angrily.
I pretended to examine the schedule.
Sometimes privacy could be offered without leaving the room.
After she departed, Marisol came in.
“You’re smiling like somebody stepped on your foot.”
I handed her the email.
She read it.
Then she swore softly in Spanish.
I laughed.
“Elegant.”
“I’m an administrator. We contain multitudes.”
We contacted the academy through its official office with Anya’s parents included.
The audition was real.
The scholarship details required clarification.
The recruiter’s suggestion that she leave us immediately was not an admission condition.
Anya’s parents looked exhausted when they came in the following evening.
Not because they doubted their daughter.
Because love did not manufacture travel money.
We discussed options.
We did not promise a full scholarship from funds already committed elsewhere.
We identified legitimate assistance and what the family could realistically afford.
It was slower than a billionaire writing a check.
It was also honest.
Later, I told Alexander about Anya while we ate dinner.
He listened.
Then he asked, “Would a private contribution help?”
“It might.”
“Would it complicate things?”
“It might.”
He nodded.
For once, neither of us pretended generosity arrived without questions.
We agreed any support would go through the school’s established process, with clear criteria and no obligation to remain.
After dinner, I found him examining the wedding notebook I had left on the table.
There were three words on the first page.
Small. Warm. Ours.
He looked up.
“I can do the first two.”
“And the third?”
His smile softened.
“That one requires both of us.”
I kissed him.
Then his telephone rang.
He glanced at the screen.
The smile vanished.
A board meeting had been moved forward.
An investor wanted to discuss the public implications of our engagement before the next financing announcement.
I leaned back.
“Public implications?”
Alexander’s jaw tightened.
“I’ll find out.”
I watched him answer.
May you like
Anya had been told to leave a school to become worthy of a stage.
Now I wondered what someone was about to tell Alexander he should leave behind.
