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That just left the four of us, and there was no way in hell I wanted to go through all of these memories again. Well, maybe someday, on my own terms, in a different setting.
But not here.
Not like this.
“It looks like you’ve decided to keep everything,” Harper noted, gesturing toward the paper-strewn bed. “And then some.”
“So what did you need us for?” I asked, flattening myself to make it past Harper so I could step all the way inside the bedroom. “Do you have some kind of… system… here? Maybe we can help with—”
“Yes, right,” Marley interrupted, gesturing for me to come closer. “We sort of have a system going on, but that’s not what we wanted.” She nodded toward Kendall. “Show them.”
Even in the dim light of the bedroom, it was easy to see the light flush spread across Kendall’s cheeks. At twenty-eight, she was the youngest in our group by a year, and the newest nurse to get hired at the VA hospital where we all worked.
With her jet-black hair, porcelain skin, and supermodel legs, she was also the prettiest.
While some women might have been threatened by all of her obvious virtues, she had been able to disarm and put us at ease in no time with her humble nature and easy smile.
Still, she was obviously a little uncomfortable with whatever the two of them had uncovered, and she gave me an almost apologetic look as she handed me a small, leather-bound book.
“We didn’t know what it was at first,” she began, her gray eyes flitting between Marley, Harper, and me.
“Then when we realized,” Marley continued, “we sort of couldn’t help ourselves. We had to take a little peek…”
“What is it?” Harper asked, craning her neck as she leaned in closer to see.
“A diary,” I said, quietly, running my fingers over the embossedAandTon the cover.Annie Trace. “It’s Annie’s journal.”
Harper reached for it, and I pulled it close to my chest, suddenly feeling overly protective of what might be inside.
This book contained Annie’s most personal thoughts and feelings, her hopes and dreams.In her own words. And even though I would have been lying if I’d said I wasn’t just as curious as the other girls, didn’t we all have an obligation to respect her privacy?
“I know what you’re thinking,” Harper said, giving me an understanding look. She took another step toward me, but didn’t reach for the book again. “I’ve been having the same thoughts all night—that we shouldn’t be here going through her stuff, that this whole thing feels like a huge invasion of her space and her privacy.”
“It really does,” I agreed. “This is all so much more difficult than I imagined it would be.”
“This is what we’re here to do, though,” Marley said. “We don’t like it any more than you two do, but Annie wanted us here. She trusted us to carry out her wishes.”
“And,” Harper continued, “if there is anything in that journal that might help us—or might at least make us feel a little better—I think she would want us to read it. Nothing is going to bring her back, but this journal was the closest thing to her heart we have left.”
I inhaled and exhaled slowly.
She was right again. They all were.
Annie would have wanted us to remember the happy times we had with her, and this journal was the best chance we had at remembering Annie on her own terms.
Still, I didn’t want to be the one to open it—even after Marley and Kendall had admitted to taking a little peek.
“Here,” I said, offering it to Harper. “You do it. I–I just… can’t.”
Marley cleared an empty space next to her on the bed, and Kendall did the same. “You’re gonna want to sit down for this,” Marley said. “At least for the part we saw.”
Oh, God.
Justified or not, my stomach was in knots. It felt like Annie might burst through the door any second and ask us what the hell we were doing.
AndGod, I would have given anything in the world to bring her back, even if it had just been to yell at us for reading her diary.
Once we were all four sitting in a semi-circle on the bed, Harper opened the book and started thumbing through the pages.
