And every now and then, when the wind blew just right, he could’ve sworn he heard Jasper Pennington’s voice in the breeze, chuckling, “Told you, kid. You’d make it.”
Eli would smile, look up at the sky, and say, “Yeah, but I did it my way.”
Then he’d get back to work, whistling as the sun dipped low, a living testament to the strange, beautiful truth that sometimes the only way to succeed… is to fail first.
