Chapter 32

Mom is sitting on the stairs when I enter the house, her head resting on the banister. If I thought Joni looked tired, Mom looks as if she hasn’t slept in a year. Her eyes are strained, the skin around them dry and taut. All the worry she’s been hiding for the past year has finally sprung free.

She doesn’t say anything, but she watches me, really looks at me, like whatever she’s seeing is just as bad and just as new as what I see on her.

I sit on the step below her, put my head in her lap, and hug her legs. Her arms go around me, and she strokes my hair.

“I’m sorry,” I mumble.

“Shhh,” she says. “All that matters is that you’re okay. Are you okay, bud?”

I nod.

“Good.”

“Where’s Declan?”

“I asked him to go home.”

I lift my head. “Because of me? Mom, I’m so—”

“It’s fine, Ryden. He’ll be back. I thought it should be you and me when you got home, in case you wanted to talk.”

I lean my head back against the wall. Suddenly it’s hard to support my own weight. I feel like absolute shit. “I can’t talk tonight,” I tell her.

She nods and stands up. “Come on. Bedtime.”

I follow her up the stairs and down the hall, dragging my feet and using the walls as support. We part ways at our respective doors, but I pause.

“Where’s Hope?”

“She’s asleep in my room. I figured that would probably be best tonight.”

Wow. That’s the first time Mom has taken Hope at night. Like, ever. I consider telling her that she doesn’t have to. In a weird way, I’ve actually gotten used to Hope sleeping—and crying—in my room every night.

But all I say is, “’Kay. Thanks. ’Night.”

• • •

I open my eyes and know immediately something’s off. But my head is pounding and my face is sore and my mouth tastes like I swallowed a handful of sand and I don’t have to look to know that my stomach is bruised. So I can’t quite place it at first.

But then I realize: a lot of somethings are off.

The room is quiet. I didn’t wake up to the sound of crying. In fact, Hope isn’t in her crib or in the room at all.

The sunlight coming through the blinds is different than it should be. It’s brighter and hitting my bed at a weird angle. It must be late in the day. I check the clock. Two p.m. Holy shit.

I’m supposed to be at work.

I get up as fast as I can, which isn’t very fast at all, grab some clothes, and head to the bathroom to jump—okay, inch slowly and carefully—into the shower. I meet Mom in the hall. Hope is saddled to her chest, looking alert and happy and curious, going “Da-da-da-da” like the world is just aces.

“You’re up,” Mom says.

“I’m late.”

She shakes her head. “I called in for you. I told them you got injured at the game last night and need a few days off.”

I blink. “We need the money.”

“I know. But you need some time off, Ry.” She looks at me seriously.

“Is my face really that bad?” I reach up to touch the tender flesh around my eye.

“It’s not your best look. But that’s not what I meant. I meant you need some time off emotionally.”

Truer words…

Since I apparently don’t have anywhere to be, I head to the living room and fall onto the couch. Mom follows and moves my feet aside so she can sit too.

“Hey, Ryden?”

“Yeah?” I say into the couch cushion.

“Wanna fill me in?”

Nope, don’t particularly feel like rehashing the Shakespearean tragedy that is my life. But she took the baby all night and let me sleep until two, so she’s kind of my hero. I owe her one.

I roll over to face her and stick to the highlight reel: the journal, quitting the team, the fight with Dave, all that shit with Joni. The end.

She sits there, nodding to herself, like she expected most of it. Alan must have told her more than I thought.

Then she says, so quietly I almost think she’s talking to herself, “You found the second journal.”

“Um, yeah. Didn’t I just tell you I did?”

“No, I know, but…” She trails off, as if she’s putting together some sort of mental puzzle.

“What? What’s going on?”

She lets out a long, resigned sigh, gets up, and walks down the hall to her room. A few moments later, she reappears, holding a notebook.

I bolt upright, causing my head to feel like it’s punching itself from the inside out.

As she comes closer, the notebook fills every corner of my vision. Thin. Single subject. New-looking. Pink. I’m absolutely positive I’ve never seen this one before.

“Tell me that is not what I think it is.” My voice cracks.

Mom’s face is sad and apologetic. “She gave it to me a couple of days before she died,” she says. “When I was over visiting.”

I feel like my heart has stopped. I didn’t check my mom’s room because I thought there was no way…I mean, I trusted…I thought surely if she had one of Meg’s notebooks, she would tell me. What the fuck!

“I asked you if you had one,” I yell. “I was going crazy looking for these things, and you swore you hadn’t seen any.”

“She made me promise,” Mom whispers. “She said I could only give you this one if you already had the other two. She seemed really serious about it. But apart from that…” She takes a breath. “I…I didn’t know what was in it, so I figured waiting a little while, until you…got a handle on things might be a smart idea. Maybe I was wrong. I don’t know. I’m so sorry, bud.” She gently sets the book on the cushion between us. Then, after a few moments’ hesitation, she leaves the room.

This is un-fucking-believable.

I stare at the glossy pink cover like it’s dripping with blood. Nothing good ever comes from these things. Whatever’s inside will only make matters worse. I don’t know how the situation could get any worse, but it always does.

I should burn the book without reading it.

But of course I won’t. ’Cause I’m a fucking idiot.

I open to the back cover.

Mabel

Alan

Ryden

I take a deep breath. Whatever is in here, I know it will be the last thing Meg will ever tell me.

I flip back to the beginning. Like the last book, most of the pages are empty, with just the first few pages filled in with Meg’s small, messy handwriting. But unlike the last journal or any of the others, this one begins with two insanely improbable words:

Dear Ryden

This isn’t a journal. This is a letter. To me. From Meg.

My heart starts beating again, pumping overtime to make up for lost time.

There’s no date at the top, but it was most likely written after Alan, which means it was written sometime between February 5 and February 15—the day she died. No, it had to have been before February 15, because she would have needed time to get it to my mom.

Dear Ryden,

If you're reading this, you've read the other two journals by now. It also means you probably hate me.

Truth.

I want you to know that I'm sorry. Not for having Hope, but for so much else. For letting you come into my life without warning you about my cancer, for lying to you about the pregnancy, for making you a father far too young and in the worst possible way, and for being too chicken to tell you the truth about all of it. And for dying. I'm really sorry about that.

But one thing that I never lied about was how I love you.

You know that movie your mom likes, The Lake House? I've been thinking about that movie a lot lately. Remember how we talked about it in school that day with Alan? As I look back, with all the supposed wisdom of someone facing the end of her life, that conversation was when I fell in love with you. Until then, I'd loved the idea of you. But that day, I knew I could never let you go, even though holding on to you was the most selfish thing I could do.

Anyway, in the movie, they're so in love, but they're at the mercy of time. Like us. We never had enough time. It's not fair. But if I had it to do over again, I'd do everything the same. Because these months with you have been the best of my life.

I know you probably feel differently right about now, after everything you've found out. But even so, I wanted you to find these journals, to know everything there is to know about me, about us. I knew you had that journal of mine_the one I forgot at your house when we first got together. I had come to hang out at your place and your mom let me in. I was going to surprise you, but when I peeked my head around your bedroom door, I saw you sitting on your bed reading my journal. It's a green one, right? You were so into it. That gave me an idea, later, after the baby became a reality and I started getting sicker. I knew if I could find a way to leave you my journals after I was gone, you'd read them just as closely. You'd listen to what I had to tell you more than any video message or letter, because you'd believe the journal was entirely uncensored_a true glimpse into my thoughts. And you'd be right.

But I had to figure out a way to do it so you'd only get the information when you were ready for it. So I left the first one with Mabel, the one that says I never thought the chemo was working. I'd written those entries even before I decided on my plan, and I knew you'd see that message in those pages, when Mabel probably wouldn't. I figured that notebook would be the easiest to find, though it would take time to get to you. Time is good. The checklists in the back of the books were the clue that there were other journals, other things to be said_if you wanted to look for them.

The fact that you've gotten this far, that you're reading this, means (to my muddled, failing brain at least) that you were actively looking for the second journal when you found it and therefore ready to know the whole truth.

But it also means you haven't moved on. You're still looking backward. I don't know how long it's been since I've been gone, but you have to move on. If not today, then someday soon.

I love you, Ryden, I will always love you, but I'm not here anymore.

Her handwriting becomes shakier, less fluid, as I read on.

I hope you'll find great love in your life, the kind that lasts a lot longer than ours. If I still have the right to ask for anything at this point, that's what I want_I want you to move on and be happy.

I've enclosed a letter for Hope. Please give it to her when she's old enough to understand it. Maybe when she's seventeen, so you can tell her that's how old I was when I wrote it. And please make sure she knows I love her, that I wanted her more than anything, and that I wish I didn't have to leave her.

Aaaand there it is. I knew she would have included something for Hope. Some sort of mother/daughter thing. I guess her letter won’t help me any, since it’s all secret and shit, but I think I already gave up on that anyway.

Along those lines, I have something else for you. I know you don't like to talk about your father; I'm not even sure how much you think about him. But I've had a lot of time on my hands while you've been at school, so I tracked him down. I thought maybe learning about him would help you figure out what kind of father you want to be. But then again, what do I know?

I love you, Ryden. Always and forever.

Love, Meg

The next page has a sealed envelope taped to it with Hope’s name on the front. And the page after that has an address, email address, and phone number for Michael Taylor. How could she possibly have…?

You know what? I can’t think about that right now.

I close the book and sit back on the couch, trying to process everything I’ve read.

“Mom,” I say. I don’t really raise my voice, but I know she can hear me.

She comes out of her room.

“You didn’t read it?” I ask.

“No.”

“Well, I think maybe you should.” I hold it out to her.

She looks at me, unsure, but takes it and opens to the first page.

I stare out the living room window while she reads. Our neighbor across the street is putting freshly carved jack-o’-lanterns on her front stoop. I wonder if they’re going to bake the seeds. Mom and I used to do that when I was little and still into Halloween.

“She found Michael,” Mom whispers. Her face is white with shock.

“Apparently. How do you think she did it? How did she even know his name? Did she talk to you about it?”

Mom shakes her head. “She must have gotten a copy of your birth certificate somewhere. Can you find that stuff out on the Internet?”

“I have no idea. I’ve never tried.”

“Me neither.”

“Maybe she hired someone?” I say. “To track him down? Maybe she used her parents’ money?”

“Maybe.”

There’s a long pause.

“Well,” Mom says, “what are you going to do?”

I let out an exhausted, painful sigh. “I have absolutely no idea.”