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“That’s months from now, isn’t it?” Elise said with a laugh.
“Yes. Just making sure,” Penny said. “I have to go anyway. My roommate wants to have dinner. You’re okay, right? You’d tell me if you weren’t okay?”
Elise’s cheek twitched. “I’m okay. Maybe even better than okay. I’m writing again. I wasn’t sure that would ever happen.”
“That’s great, Mom. You deserve it.”
Penny’s voice was doubtful, but Elise couldn’t give too much power to it. She was still basically a kid, wrapped up in her own selfish desires.
She had to let Elise be free, just as Elise had had to learn to let her children go.
**
WAYNE LEFT A LITTLEnote on Elise’s bed and breakfast door the following afternoon.
Dinner at my place? 7 p.m. You bring the wine. I’ll bring the rabbit food.
Elise grinned from ear-to-ear. She tore the note off the door, folded it up, and slipped it into her own journal. At the mirror, she inspected her wind-swept hair, the eyeliner that had dribbled down under her eyes, the lipstick that needed retouching. At a loss, she jumped into the shower and scrubbed herself clean, then set to work reconstructing a better Elise.
After she’d dried her hair, done her makeup, and donned that new mustard sweater and a pair of jeans, she sat at the edge of her bed, her heart pounding.
Come on. You weren’t this nervous when you slept in Wayne’s bed for three nights in a row.
You weren’t this nervous when you sat by him on the couch and watched a movie.
You weren’t this nervous when he took you horseback riding to see your dad for the first time.
But wasn’t that the best part about falling in love?
No matter what, the butterflies followed you. They ate you up from the inside. They made it impossible to feel anything but sixteen years old and on the brink of your life.
With still an hour left before Elise had to leave for Wayne’s, Elise jumped from the bed and traced a finger along the spine of her mother’s diary.
She hadn’t looked at it in days and days.
What was it Wayne had asked her?
“Have you looked at the diary any more for clues about why it didn’t work out between your mom and Dean?”
Elise flipped through the diary, catching random glimpses of beautiful nights Allison had spent with Dean.
...impossible to describe how much I love him...
...I don’t get the sense that he loves his wife very much...
...I ran into Mandy at the supermarket the other day, when I went out to grab Jane a snack. Mandy looked right through me. Does she suspect anything going on between Dean and someone else? Maybe she’s just too...
...I don’t know how much more of this I can take...
Filming has ended. Jane and the other cast and crew members have largely decided to return to Los Angeles. I don’t know why, but I’ve made up my mind to stay a tiny bit longer. I just want to give Dean the chance to man up, to be with me, to create a life with me.
Is that stupid?
I don’t know.
Elise hadn’t known that her mother had planned to stay on Mackinac.
This sent shivers up and down her spine.
