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“This shit is like therapy,” she says, sitting up a little straighter. “Anything you want to get off your chest,” she adds, laughing as she swipes at her under eyes.
Lance.
He’s something I should get off my chest. But something keeps me from telling Nina about all the ways Lance Sullivan has brought me back to life—or did… before I lost Dad.
“I started reading the diaries,” I tell her instead.
She turns in her seat, placing her feet between the two loungers. “You did?”
I nod, wondering how much of the stories my mother left for me I want to share.
When Mason told me he wasn’t ready to go through Dad’s things with me, it was Nina who showed up at the house to help me. We spent the day rummaging through the boxes Dad had stashed away in the cupboards and loft space, finding an array of items that made my heart break all over again.
Videos I barely remember being filmed which I now watch at least once a week. His clothes—jumpers I’ll never wash that smell exactly like him. We donated anything that didn’t have sentimental value, and the rest I kept.
The most surprising thing we found, though, was my mother’s diaries, the original ones that my dad told me were ruined. They weren’t as damaged as he’d said, but they did contain words I’m not sure Mason and I will ever be ready to read.
She wrote to us personally. When she was sick… as she was dying. She told me about Dad, about her parents and her life and what she and Frey might have done that day.
I’d been given the reprinted copies when I was twelve, and although they gave me insight, nothing could have prepared me to read the aching truth that was Ellis Lowell’s short life.
“I’ve not read all the entries,” I tell Nina. “I read the first few and then the last, curiosity getting the better of me.” I give her a guilty look. “I’m about halfway through them now.”
“Are you… are you glad you found them?”
I nod before I can even consider her question. “Yes. I think Dad wanted me to find them.”
“I agree,” she whispers, grasping my hand in hers. “He probably just never knew the right time to give them to you.”
She’s right. I know that Dad would never have kept them from Mase and me. I think he was being careful as to when to give them to us.
I look at Nina and smile wide. “She would have loved you, you know. She’d be proud of Mase and would’ve been besotted with you.”
As her dimples pop, she leans closer and squeezes my hand in hers. “Maybe.”
“Thank you, Nina. For everything. Bringing Mase closer again and helping me this past month. You’re a true friend.”
She straightens in her lounger, not letting go of my hand as she closes her eyes and soaks up the sun. “You’re welcome, Scar.”
Scarlet
I’m not sure how a week flew by quite as quickly as it did, but today we have to go home, and I dread it a little inside.
It’s been a week of healing.
I spoke to Mason and spent time with him and the girls—memories made as a group that will last a lifetime.
I wish I could look at Lance and know what burns between us, but I don’t anymore, even after an entire week with him.
His gaze wasn’t careful, as if he didn’t care who saw, and yet it never lingered for as long as I wanted it to. He hasn’t touched me once.
And the only time he’s spoken to me has been to ask me if I’m okay. Sometimes he didn’t even speak the words. He’d just throw me a look I couldn’t ignore, and I’d nod, knowing.
I didn’t think I’d be so relaxed with him here, but if anything, I’ve felt safer than ever. Looked after, with cheese and ham toasties that were left on the kitchen counter after my morning walks and then the twinkling of fairy lights, which I found wrapped around my wooden bedpost on the second night.
I give the man nothing for two months, and he still finds a way to steal my heart.
I just don’t know if I’m ready for him to keep it.
