Page 150 of Ripped & Shipped
“I’m better. Trying not to think too much about any of it. I haven’t even been on social media today. I’m a little scared to check.”
I steel my features and tell her, “Maybe you ought to check. Just to know what you’re dealing with.”
Ella Mae lets out a long sigh. “Yeah. You’re probably right.”
“And, I’ve given it a lot of thought,” I say. “If you want to leave Bordeaux after this week, we can start making plans. The main DOD office is in Columbus. Alex and Courtney are there. Maybe we can make a fresh start. We’d still be close enough so you could visit Meg and Mabel every week, or whenever you wanted. And I could travel to see my family and friends.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“There’s not much I wouldn’t do for you, Boots.”
“I’m starting to believe you.”
I watch closely as Ella Mae pulls away from my shoulder and reaches down into her carry-on to bring out her phone. She powers it on and clicks on the Instagram icon. I don’t know if I’m even breathing. She taps her feed and starts scrolling. Her forehead scrunches. She keeps scrolling. I’m sitting still, waiting for her to say something—anything.
“Chris?”
“Yeah?”
“What is all this?”
“All what?” I ask.
“These posts in my feed. I’m tagged in all of them.”
“What kind of posts?”
She looks over at me with a skeptical side eye. “Do you know about this?”
I take her phone and scroll, allowing a small smile to cross my face as I see each post, one after the other. I hand the phone back to her. She looks down at it again, and then up at me.
“This hashtag. It’s got to be you who did this.”
“What’s the hashtag?”
“Chris! Tell me you did this. I know it’s you.”
“What’s the hashtag, Ella Mae?”
Her eyes are misty with unshed tears when she looks up at me, and in a voice barely above a whisper, she says, “#ComeHomeEllaMae.”
She shakes her head in disbelief. Or maybe she’s overwhelmed by the gesture. It’s not enough, in my opinion. But it’s a start.
“Come home. Me. They want me to come home.”
“Looks like it,” I say.
She shakes her head, turning to look out the window. Her body is so still. I wait. If she thinks this was all me, she’s so dead wrong. Maybe I set the ball rolling, went around town knocking sense into people, but this was all them. The hashtag was Jayme’s idea. She said,We have to find a way to tell Ella Mae she’s a part of this town, and it has to be a way that matters to her.
“I feel like one raw nerve ending,” Ella Mae says. “After all the hope I put into this trip … All the scorn before I left … I thought I’d get clarity while I was out here. I’m going home more confused than ever.”
I nod. “Been there.”
She looks at me with a questioning expression.
“Coming home after I discharged from the Army. Life had gone on over the four years I was in college, naturally. But everyone scattered then. Most of them came back, but I enlisted right out of college. Officer Candidate because of my ROTC. Then I was in the Army for seven years. I came back home here and there for short visits, but for the most part, I spent eleven years away from Bordeaux. And …”
I look out the window past Ella Mae.
