I take Hope from him, and she immediately starts to whine. “I just thought…I don’t know what I thought.” I snap Hope’s car seat into the base and buckle her in. “I read some stuff in Meg’s journal…” I trail off. Suddenly I’m really tired. I close Hope’s door and let all my weight collapse against the side of the car.
I feel Alan’s eyes on me. “No offense, man, but you’re kind of a mess.”
I don’t say anything. Disagreement takes energy.
“Maybe it’s time to let this whole thing go, Ryden. I mean, really, even if she did leave two other journals somewhere—”
“She did.” I lift my head sharply and look at him. “I thought you agreed it was something she would do.”
“I said it was something she would do, not that she actually succeeded in doing it. But even if she did, and even if you do find them, what do you expect to happen? She’s still going to be gone, man. You’re driving yourself crazy. It’s not worth it.”
I push off from the side of the car and plant myself in the driver’s seat, looking back at Hope through the rearview mirror. “That’s where you’re wrong.”
Chapter 13
Today is Sunday. I don’t have to work. Hallelujah, amen. And there’s no soccer today either. But that means I’m on Hope duty. I have no excuse.
I got basically no sleep last night, yet again. Between all the crying and feeding and diaper changing, my thoughts were preoccupied with what Alan said. Are the journals really out there? Does the checklist mean anything, or am I so desperate that I’m fabricating some big conspiracy in my head?
No. Even if it turns out the checklist was nothing more than Meg’s own little journal-organizing system, even if it doesn’t have some giant, major, world-altering purpose, it only makes sense that if Meg checked the first box on the checklist and put the red journal in Mabel’s room, there are two others for me and Alan. And what harm could it do to keep searching for them?
I call Mabel again.
She answers after four rings. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, why?”
“It’s 7:16 a.m. on a Sunday.”
I look at the clock. So it is. “Oh. Sorry. I don’t really sleep anymore.”
“It’s okay.” Her voice is softer now. Fuck. I don’t want her pity.
I clear my throat and get straight to the point. “So listen, is there any way you can get access to the storage unit where her stuff is?”
There’s a pause. “I don’t know. I don’t know which storage place it’s at or the unit number.”
“Can’t you ask your parents?”
“I don’t think you get it. They won’t talk about her. Apart from a few photos of me and Meg on the mantel in the living room and the box of ashes on the windowsill—and the massive amounts of wine my dad goes through every night so he’s never sober enough in the presence of my mother to actually have a real conversation—it’s like she was just passing through, a visitor who moved on at the first sign of something better.” Mabel pauses again. “They’ve never been the lovey, fuzzy kind of parents; we all know that. But now they’re… It’s like they’ve decided feeling nothing is better than feeling sad.” She sounds bitter and exhausted.
Meg wouldn’t want her ashes in a box on a windowsill in that stark, cold house. She would want them scattered at the lake, at our spot.
I wish we could stay here forever, I said once when we were at the lake.
Me too, she whispered back. It’s perfect here.
I wish I could do that for her. But convincing her parents to let me do that would first require them to acknowledge that Hope and I actually exist. Not gonna happen.
Though the massive amounts of booze actually sounds like a pretty good avoidance tactic—I may have to try that.
“Mabel,” I say. “Listen. This book you gave me, it has a list written in the back. Your name, then Alan’s, then mine. There’s a check in the box next to your name, but not the others. Do you remember seeing it?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Do you have any idea what it could mean?”
“Maybe she wanted to leave us each a journal.” I can hear the shrug in her voice.
“Yeah, but why? Why would she have chosen three journals from the hundreds she had? And why wouldn’t she have just given them to us directly?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they were more important to her than the others somehow. Hmmm. Was there anything in that book that was different or unusual? I’m trying to remember.”
I decide to tell her what I figured out. “I think Meg knew she was going to die.”
“Well, yeah, there’s that part toward the end of the journal where she says that.”
“No, I mean I think she knew a lot earlier than that. Maybe even before she got pregnant. I think that’s why she decided to keep the baby.”
“I don’t understand.” Mabel sounds leery now.
I explain the “legacy” thing.
Mabel’s silent.
“You there?” I ask.
“Yeah. Just…thinking. She was always so certain that she was going to be okay.”
“Turns out maybe she wasn’t.” And I never picked up on it. Add that to the list of ways I’ve failed her.
“She kept the baby because she thought she was going to die anyway?” Mabel whispers. “She martyred herself.”
“Yeah.”