“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.