Oh. Good. Lord. I supposed that explained a lot.
Rose continued, oblivious of the fact that the information she’d just imparted had blown me away. “Mags tried to get me to move out there with her. I couldn’t do it, though. I knew I wanted to teach here on the island. I studied English literature and language at Beal College in Bangor, and then I came right back here and got a job at the school. That was it for me. I still think about it, though. What my life would have been like if I’d upped and left to live in the city with her.
“The local newspaper ran a story on Ronan when he was awarded that medal from the army. That was probably the last time I spoke to Mags on the phone. I’d called her because the article said Ronan hadn’t even attended the ceremony to collect the damn thing. That they’d had to send it to him in the mail.” Rose shrugged, finishing her coffee. “I wanted to congratulate him, to tell him how proud we were of him here on the island, but he wouldn’t even take my call.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Journal
March 15, 2000
This journal smells like the tack shop we bought Topper’s bridle from. I love it. Dad said it was too boyish for me, but whatever. It’s my money. I can buy what I like with it. Sully says he’s going to wait until I’ve filled every single page, and then he’s gonna steal it and read it. Such a jerk. He’d better not. Sully James Fletcher, if you’re reading this, you’re going straight to hell. Do not invade my privacy or I’ll saw your balls off with a rusty butter knife!
Should probably make the same threat to Ronan, but why bother? He’s too busy plotting out his “Great American Road Trip” to think twice about anything I scribble in here. And good, too! At least I only have to worry myself with one of the Fletcher boys. So…I don’t know. I guess I’ll only write in here when I have something important to say. The book’s too nice to waste, and I’m a sixteen-year-old girl. Seems a shame to cover the pages in shit about boys and high school drama. I want to be able to look back through this book in forty years’ time and be proud of the moments I’ve recorded here.
I hope by then I can say I’ve lived a life worth writing about. I hope by then Sully and I are married, and we’ve had kids of our own. I hope we’ve traveled the world. Seen everything there is to see. I hope we’ve come back to the island and built a new life for ourselves here, and I can ride every day and Sully can make things in his workshop. That would make me happy. That would make me very happy indeed.
M
M for Magda. I’d been mistaken; I’d thought the journal Ronan left for me to read was his, but it wasn’t. It was his wife’s, and the very first entry on the very first page confirmed all too clearly what Rose had told me: Magda had started out in love with Sully. I could have guessed the problem between Ronan and his brother had stemmed from a woman somehow, but I’d had no idea it would be Ronan’s dead wife. What strife that must have caused. And how? Magda was sixteen when she wrote on the first page in her diary. Flicking through the occasionally brittle, occasionally damp smelling book, I skipped to the very last entry in the journal, only three quarters of the way through, and noted the date.
April last year. The handwriting had changed from girly, loopy cursive to a more elegant, sprawling text over the years, but the lettering was still unmistakably from the same hand. I avoided the words written onto the paper, not wanting to read them yet. For some reason it felt like skipping to the end of a novel and ruining the story for myself, though in this instance I already knew what happened at the end. Magda was dead, and now so was Ronan. Sully was the last man standing.
After Rose had left, I’d ducked into the office and grabbed the book before I’d had a chance to change my mind. I needed some more background history, and low and behold it looked like I was going to get it in spades. There had to be over a hundred entries in Magda’s journal. Some of the pages were rigid and crackled as they were turned. Others were covered with photos. Some bore event tickets, plane tickets…stubs to movies. Closer to the end of the book, I caught sight of a sonogram tacked to a page, and I had to stop myself from investigating closer to see if it was Connor or Amie Magda had commemorated in her book.