The Man Everyone Abandoned

The Lessons My Father Never Explained

Three days had gone by since Elias left Westbridge Heights. For the first time, he was starting to find a normal routine.

His mornings were for helping Gabriel with repairs. His evenings were for sitting quietly, trying to figure out the strange turn his life had taken. It wasn't much of a life yet, but it was his.

That morning, Gabriel found him in the hallway, staring at a broken door lock.

"What's wrong with it?" Gabriel asked, watching as Elias looked at the metal.

"The spring is damaged," Elias said.

Gabriel frowned, looking surprised. "You can tell that just by looking?"

Elias didn"t answer with words. Instead, he turned the handle. Click. Click.

"Listen," Elias said. "There"s stiffness here."

Gabriel tried the handle himself but heard nothing. "How did you learn that?" he asked.

"My father," Elias said.

Gabriel’s face changed. When Gabriel asked what else he had been taught, Elias shrugged. "Too many things. Locks, mostly."

When Gabriel asked why, Elias didn"t really know. "He just said a man should know how to get into a room and how to get out of one."

Elias felt a pang of sadness. He thought his father was just being careful, but Gabriel’s strange comment, "Perhaps he wasn’t," made him wonder if there was more to it.

When he asked Gabriel what that meant, the man just walked away. Elias felt a knot in his stomach, realizing his father had been teaching him things that were far more important than he had ever guessed.

Later that morning, Gabriel handed Elias a list of supplies. "Don"t lose this," he warned.

"I won’t," Elias said.

Even after Gabriel told him to be careful, Elias just folded the list and put it in his pocket. He had already memorized every single item. When Gabriel realized Elias knew all the items, Elias corrected him. There were actually thirteen things, not twelve. "You forgot the batteries," Elias said. Gabriel smiled, looking at him like he was seeing his father all over again.

At the market, Elias moved through the crowd. He focused on his list: soap, light bulbs, sealant, bread, and medicine.

At the pharmacy, he saw a woman arguing with a cashier. The cashier claimed she hadn"t paid, but when Elias looked at her paper, he saw the mistake.

"Excuse me," he said. "This date is wrong. The transaction happened yesterday, but your register is showing today"s date."

The pharmacist checked the system and saw that Elias was right. Someone had changed the settings.

After the woman thanked him, Elias headed back. He didn"t notice the man in the dark jacket watching him from the street.

When he got back, Gabriel was waiting. "You took longer than expected," Gabriel said.

Elias explained what happened at the pharmacy. Gabriel just sighed. "You"re too much like him," he said, thinking of Elias"s father.

Elias tried to ask more, but Gabriel stopped talking.

That evening, Gabriel locked himself in his office to look at a list of names. Elias heard a noise in the hallway, but when he checked, no one was there. Still, the lock on Gabriel’s office door had been messed with.

It wasn’t Elias, which meant someone else was in the building, looking for something.

The next morning, Gabriel sent Elias back to the pharmacy with a mysterious envelope. "Just deliver it," Gabriel said.

As Elias walked through the back streets to avoid road work, he was being followed by the man in the dark jacket. Elias had no idea this simple trip would change his life, and he certainly didn’t know he wasn’t the person they were really tracking.