If you’re reading this, I imagine that might be hard to do. But I hope you will—if not today, then soon. You have a beautiful smile, effortless and effervescent.
As I write this, you are sleeping next to me in my old bedroom at Sugar’s—whoops, Beau’s—house. Today we drove to Cypremort Point and you swam like a seal in your polka-dot bikini. The sun was bright and we shared the same tan lines on our shoulders this evening, eating boiled seafood down on the dock. I let you have the extra cob of corn, like I always do.
You look so peaceful and so young when you are sleeping, Eureka. It’s hard to believe you’re seventeen.
You’re growing up. I promise not to try and stop you.
I don’t know when you’ll read this. Most of us are not graced with the knowledge of how our deaths will find us. But if this letter makes its way to you sooner rather than later, please … don’t let my death determine the course of your life.
I have tried to raise you so that there would not be much to explain in a letter like this. I feel we know each other better than any two people could. Of course, there will still be things you have to discover on your own. Wisdom holds a candle to experience, but you’ve got to take the candle and walk alone.
Don’t cry. Carry what you love about me with you; leave the pain behind.
Hold on to the thunderstone. It’s puzzling but powerful.
Wear my locket when you yearn to have me near; perhaps it will help guide you.
And enjoy the book. I know you will.
With deep love and admiration—
Mom
9
NOWHERE BOY
Eureka gripped the letter tightly. She pushed back against the possibility of feeling what her mother’s words nearly made her feel.
At the bottom of the page, Diana’s signature was smudged. At the edge of her cursive Mom lay three tiny raised circles. Eureka ran her finger over them, as if they were a language she had to touch to understand.
She couldn’t explain how she knew: they were Diana’s tears.
But her mother didn’t cry. If she did, Eureka had never seen it. What else had she never known about Diana?
She could remember their most recent trip to Cypremort Point so clearly: early May, flat-bottomed jon boats jostling against their slips, sun blazing low in the sky. Had Eureka really slept so soundly afterward that she hadn’t heard her mother crying? Why would Diana have been crying? Why did she write this letter? Did she know she was going to die?
Of course not. The letter said so.
Eureka wanted to scream. But the urge passed, like a scary face in a haunted-house ride at a county fair.
“Eureka.” Dad stood before her. They were in the parking lot outside Fontenot’s office. The sky above him was a pale blue, with pale white bars of clouds. The air was so humid, her T-shirt felt wet.
Eureka had stayed inside the letter as long as she could, not looking up as she’d followed Dad out of the boardroom, into the elevator, through the lobby, out to the car.
“What?” She clutched the letter, fearing anything might take it away.
“Mrs. LeBlanc’s watching the twins for another half hour.” He glanced at his watch. “We could get a banana freeze. It’s been a while.”
Eureka was surprised to find that she did want a banana freeze from Jo’s Snows around the corner from their church, St. John’s. It had been their tradition before Rhoda and the twins and high school and the accident and meetings with lawyers about dead mothers’ bewildering inheritances.