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I sighed. Amelia had passed her midterm by the skin of her teeth after we’d spent two solid weeks going over the material. I thought things were improving, but now she was slipping again, and nothing I said or did was propping her up.
“River,” Dad said. “I will talk to her. I promise.”
I nodded and started to go. I was at the door when he said, “Oh, a big delivery came for you today. I had them leave it in the entry—it’s too damn heavy for me to carry to your room.”
“That’s for me?”
“Yep. All the way from Paris.”
Every part of me froze except for my heart that took off, racing around my ribs. I practically ran to the foyer and knelt beside the trunk I should’ve recognized immediately.
“His life’s work,” I murmured, running my hand over the surface.
I took hold of the side handles and hefted it. It was heavy as hell; my left shoulder ached as I struggled to carry it upstairs.
In my room, I kicked the door shut behind me and dumped the trunk on my bed. Its dark red surface was scuffed, customs notices from Paris and New York affixed to the front, and a shipping address from the Le Bristol Hotel. The lock had been taped over by thick industrial tape that took me several minutes to cut through.
My heart in my throat, I opened the trunk to Holden’s journals. Maybe a hundred of them; he’d told me they dated all the way back to when he was a kid. I took one out and held it in my hands. A newer one, less worn than the others. My fingers itched to open it, to read his words and reclaim a piece of him I’d gone so long without.
I can’t. It’s too private.
But he’d sent them to me. He’d meant for me to have them, didn’t he?
Slowly, I opened the journal and flipped to a random page dated November of last year.
The conversion therapy’s cruelest lesson wasn’t taught in the hardest moments—the night marches, the beatings, or even the lake. The cruelty was in the words fed to us, a steady diet of self-hate. A mainline of loathing and unworthiness injected directly into our bloodstream every day. Long after the bruises have faded, the poison lingers, circulating through every part of me and rotting everything I touch.
When River tells me he loves me, the poison whispers that he’s lying.
When I want to say it back, the poison tells me my words aren’t worth the breath it takes to utter them.
The poison commanded me to run away, and I did, even though I?
??d have given anything to stay.
I took the words like a deserved punch to the gut and flipped through other pages, scanning quickly. But the same theme rose to the surface every time—what was done to Holden in Alaska went deeper than I could ever know, even after witnessing his alcohol benders, his shivering in seventy-degree heat, his march into the ocean that black night. He covered it up with elegant clothes, a fuck-the-world attitude, and a sense of humor that reassured everyone he was fine. But underneath…
I shut the journal, my heart breaking all over again and guilt filling in the cracks. Holden was in constant pain and this trunk was filled with his cries for help. Page after page, thousands upon thousands of cries for help.
And no one answered.
He’s calling to me.
I shut the trunk and went to my laptop. Google told me the Le Bristol Hotel was in the 8th Arrondissement of Paris. That didn’t mean anything to me, but now I had an address.
I hurried from my room and knocked on Amelia’s door. My sluggish blood felt electrified. Fear and hope and love—God, the love came rushing at me, full force, whacking me so hard when I’d started to forget how strong it was.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” Amelia said from inside her room.
“Amelia, I need to talk to you.”
“Go away, River.”
“That trunk downstairs? It’s from Holden.”
I heard a rustling, then the door flung open. Amelia grabbed my arm, pulled me into her room and shut the door. “You heard from him? Oh my God, sit down. Tell me everything.”
I chuckled lightly. “I don’t know much. He sent me old journals he wrote during a pretty fucking terrible time in his life.”
