Parker A LITTLE LIGHT

SITTING IN THE FRONT SEAT of my rental car, still in Amelia’s yard, I took three deep breaths. Sometimes it hit me hard, at moments like this, that I was alone. Really, truly alone.

What I was thinking about now was absolutely ridiculous. No, not ridiculous. Mad. Unhinged. They should put me in a twin bed across the room from Tilley so they could keep an eye on me.

I remembered being in church as a kid, and the minister told us that when we were struggling with something, we should pray really hard and then open the Bible to a random page. God would speak to us through that page and tell us what to do. Well, I figured that God had enough on his hands without having to prove himself to me through some game with the Bible.

But once Greer died, I figured she didn’t have as much going on as God, so maybe I could ask her to shed a little light through her journals. I had only brought one with me from Palm Beach. It was lying in the passenger seat like a therapy dog. And when I got back in the car after Amelia dropped the bomb on me, I said out loud, “G, if you can hear me thinking, then you’re probably thinking I’m crazy. I know I am. But if you could help me decide what to do, that really would help me out.”

I opened the notebook randomly. That’s when I realized that, even though I thought I had known everything about Greer, no one ever really knows all of anyone.