Lisa Smith - The Struggle

Dear Diary,

Things seem clearer today, maybe because I’ve come to a decision. It’s a decision that terrifies me, but it’s better than the only alternative I can think of.

I’m going to tell Stefan everything.

It’s the only thing I can do now. Founders’ Day is Saturday and I haven’t come up with any plan of my own. But maybe Stefan can, if he realizes how desperate the situation is. I’m going over to spend the day at the boarding house tomorrow, and when I get there I’m going to tell him everything I should have told him in the first place.

Everything. About Damon, too.

I don’t know what he’ll say. I keep remembering his face in my dreams. The way he looked at me, with such bitterness and anger. Not as if he loved me at all. If he looks at me like that tomorrow…

Oh, I’m scared. My stomach is churning. I could barely touch Thanksgiving dinner—and I can’t keep still I feel as if I might fly apart into a million pieces. Go to sleep tonight? Ha.

Please let Stefan understand. Please let him forgive me.

The funniest thing is, I wanted to become a better person for him. I wanted to be worthy of his love. Stefan has these ideas about honor, about what’s right and wrong. And now, when he finds out how I’ve been lying to him, what will he think of me? Will he believe me, that I was only trying to protect him? Will he ever trust me again?

Tomorrow I’ll know. Oh, God, I wish it were already over. I don’t know how I’ll live until then.

Elena slipped out of the house without telling Aunt Judith where she was going. She was tired of lies, but she didn’t want to face the fuss there would inevitably be if she said she was going to Stefan’s. Ever since Damon had come to dinner, Aunt Judith had been talking about him, throwing subtle and not-so-subtle hints into every conversation. And Robert was almost as bad. Elena sometimes thought he egged Aunt Judith on.

She leaned on the doorbell of the boarding house wearily. Where was Mrs. Flowers these days? When the door finally opened, Stefan was behind it.

He was dressed for outdoors, his jacket collar turned up. “I thought we could go for a walk,” he said.

“No.” Elena was firm. She couldn’t manage a real smile for him, so she stopped trying. She said, “Let’s go upstairs, Stefan, all right? There’s something we need to talk about.”

He looked at her a moment in surprise. Something must have shown in her face, for his expression gradually stilled and darkened. He took a deep breath and nodded. Without a word, he turned and led the way to his room.

The trunks and dressers and bookcases had long since been put back into order, of course. But Elena felt as if she was really noticing this for the first time. For some reason, she thought of the very first night she’d been here, when Stefan had saved her from Tyler’s disgusting embrace. Her eyes ran over the objects on the dresser: the fifteenth century gold florins, the ivory-hiked dagger, the little iron coffer with the hinged lid. She’d tried to open that the first night and he’d slammed the lid down.

She turned. Stefan was standing by the window, outlined by the rectangle of gray and dismal sky. Every day this week had been chilly and misty, and this was no exception. Stefan’s expression mirrored the weather outside.

“Well,” he said quietly, “what do we need to talk about?”

There was one last moment of choice, and then Elena committed herself. She stretched out a hand to the small iron coffer and opened it.

Inside, a length of apricot silk shone with muted luster. Her hair ribbon. It reminded her of summer, of summer days that seemed impossibly far away just now. She gathered it up and held it out to Stefan.

“About this,” she said.

He had taken a step forward when she touched the coffer, but now he looked puzzled and surprised. “About that ?”

“Yes. Because I knew it was there, Stefan. I found it a long time ago, one day when you left the room for a few minutes. I don’t know why I had to know what was in there, but I couldn’t help it. So I found the ribbon. And then…” She stopped and braced herself. “Then I wrote about it in my diary.”

Stefan was looking more and more bewildered, as if this was not at all what he’d been expecting. Elena groped for the right words.

“I wrote about it because I thought it was evidence that you’d cared about me all along, enough to pick it up and keep it. I never thought it could be evidence of anything else.”

Then, suddenly, she was speaking quickly. She told him about taking her diary to Bonnie’s house, about how it had been stolen. She told him about getting the notes, about realizing that Caroline was the one who was sending them. And then, turning away, pulling the summer-colored silk over and over through her nervous fingers, she told him about Caroline and Tyler’s plan.

Her voice almost gave out at the end. “I’ve been so frightened since then,” she whispered, her eyes still on the ribbon. “Scared that you’d be angry with me. Scared of what they’re going to do. Just scared. I tried to get the diary back, Stefan, I even went to Caroline’s house. But she has it too well hidden.

And I’ve thought and thought, but I can’t think of any way of stopping her from reading it.” At last she looked up at him. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be!” he said, startling her with his vehemence. She felt the blood drain from her face. But Stefan was going on. “You should be sorry for keeping something like that from me when I could have helped you. Elena, why didn’t you just tell me?”

“Because it’s all my fault. And I had a dream…” She tried to describe how he had looked in the dreams, the bitterness, the accusation in his eyes. “I think I would die if you really looked at me that way,” she concluded miserably.

But Stefan’s expression as he looked at her now was a combination of relief and wonder. “So that’s it,” he said, almost in a whisper himself. “That’s what’s been bothering you.”

Elena opened her mouth, but he was still speaking. “I knew something was wrong, I knew you were holding something back. But I thought…” He shook “his head and a skewed smile tugged at his lips. “It doesn’t matter now. I didn’t want to invade your privacy. I didn’t even want to ask. And all the time you were worried about protecting me .”

Elena’s tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth. The words seemed to be stuck, too. There’s more, she thought, but she couldn’t say it, not when Stefan’s eyes looked like that, not when his whole face was alight that way.

“When you said we needed to talk today, I thought you’d changed your mind about me,” he said simply, without self-pity. “And I wouldn’t have blamed you. But instead…” He shook his head again. “Elena,” he said, and then she was in his arms.

It felt so good to be there, so right. She hadn’t even realized how wrong things had been between them until now, when the wrongness had disappeared. This was what she remembered, what she had felt that first glorious night when Stefan had held her. All the sweetness and tenderness in the world surging between them. She was home, where she belonged. Where she would always belong.

Everything else was forgotten.

As she had in the beginning, Elena felt as if she could almost read Stefan’s thoughts. They were connected, a part of each other. Their hearts beat to the same rhythm.

Only one thing was needed to make it complete. Elena knew that, and she tossed her hair back, reaching from behind to pull it away from the side of her neck. And this time Stefan did not protest or thwart her. Instead of refusal he was radiating a deep acceptance —and a deep need.