I sink to the stoop’s top step and listen. The two of them are having so much fun in there, laughing and playing and bonding, like they’re the mom and daughter in a Cheerios commercial.
I look at the sky. I really hope Meg is witnessing this, wherever she is now. We made that laugh together. Even with all the other shit, everything I did, all the mistakes I made, that laugh is one twinkling star in a blanket of darkness.
“Your daddy’s going to be home from work any minute, little girl,” Mom says. “Isn’t that great news? We get to see Daddy soon!”
The joy in my gut twists into trepidation. If I go in, I’ll ruin it. Hope will get all anxious again, and clueless, fumbling me will take over for Mom, and the magical moment will be over.
Mom must tickle Hope or do something funny, because there’s that laugh again. “That’s right! Can you say Daddy?”
Guess that’s my cue.
“Guess what?” I say to Mom as I open the door and take the stairs two at a time.
She smiles. Hope smiles too, from her perch on Mom’s hip. Her eyes look different today. A brighter blue. “What?”
“The recruiter from UCLA is coming to see me play in a couple of weeks.”
The smile vanishes from Mom’s face. “He is?”
“Yeah, game three. What’s the matter? This is it, Mom. He’s flying here from California to see me. They don’t do that for everyone. He’s going to offer me a full ride.”
Mom shakes her head a little. “That’s wonderful, Ryden. A real testament to your talent.”
“So…?”
“So…” She pointedly looks down at Hope, who’s still smiling, unaware the mood in the house has shifted. “What about her?”
“She’ll come with me. They have the day care place there, remember?”
Mom raises an eyebrow. “Yes, but—”
“Mom.” Why does she have to ruin this for me? “There’s no way in hell I’m turning down this opportunity. UCLA was always the plan. And I need one thing to stick to the plan, okay? So it has to work out, because there’s no other option.” She opens her mouth to say something, but I keep talking. “This is for Hope too, you know. If I go to UCLA, I’m securing a future for her. For us. You too. We’ll have money. Opportunities we wouldn’t have otherwise. You know it’s true.”
Part of my brain pipes up and reminds me that I need to find the journals before I leave for California. Once I find out whatever Meg had to say to me, the new-better-good stuff will have room to flood in.
“Okay. Fine,” Mom says. But the way she says it, it’s not really fine at all.
Chapter 16
Three days later, Mabel and I still haven’t found either of the other two journals. We spend Thursday morning going through the remaining two boxes. Zilch.
“Maybe they don’t exist,” Mabel says, wiping an arm over her sweaty forehead and sitting back on her heels.
I shake my head. “They exist,” I insist. “They have to. She wouldn’t write that list and put that book in your room without there being two others out there that she wanted us to find. She wouldn’t fuck with us like that.”
Mabel just watches me through sad eyes.
“No,” I say. “Don’t look at me like that. Don’t pity me, Mabel.”
“I’m not pitying you. She was my sister. I miss her as much as you do.”
“Yeah, but you weren’t the one who killed—”
Mabel leaps to her feet. “Seriously, Ryden, enough with that. Just stop.”
I stare back at her indignantly. I don’t care what she thinks. She thinks she knows everything because Meg’s journal entry said she didn’t blame me, or there was nothing to blame me for, or whatever. But Mabel wasn’t there. She wasn’t part of any of it. She has no idea what she’s talking about. But I’ll stop saying it around her if that’s what she wants.
“Well, either way,” I say, “Meg knew what she was doing with the journal. She wanted us to find it because she wanted us to know the truth. Without that first one, we wouldn’t know that she knew she was going to die all along. I think there was something else she wanted us to know, and I think we owe it to her to find out what.”
Mabel stares at me. “We owe it to her? Since when is that the reason we’re searching for these journals? I thought it was because we wanted the answers for ourselves. So we could move on.”
“There are lots of reasons.” I stand up too. Now I’m the one looking down on her. I lift Hope out of her car seat, balance her on my hip, and give her a pacifier. She’d be on my side about this if she were old enough to understand. I’m beginning to think she’s the only one. “We can’t give up.”
“But what if they don’t exist? We’ll be chasing a ghost for the rest of our lives.”
“They do.”