by Sarah Ockler
“I’ve thought about it. But I told her I’d stay focused on all of the house stuff and stop asking about the past. She doesn’t want to talk about it. And part of me hates her for it and thinks she’s being crazy and selfish.”
“What about the other part?”
“The other part looks at these pictures and the diary and I can’t even imagine how horrible it must have been when Stephanie died. What it must have done to their family. And then I feel like the selfish one for wanting her to relive it all just so I can find answers that might not even exist.”
Patrick hands me a photo from his stack. “Honestly, Del? I think you should try. At least show your mom the pictures, even if you don’t tell her about the diary.”
I take the photo from him and hold it in front of my face. It’s us—my mother and me. She’s smiling with me on her lap as I blow bubbles into the summer sky, my hair in pigtails and undoubtedly warm from the sun and the touch of her hands. Looking at it now, I can feel them on my small shoulders. I remember the picture. I remember when Papa took it because he had to do it more than once—I kept turning around to show Mom the bubbles. My grandfather made cow and frog and pig noises to get my attention. He ultimately won with the pig, and when I stopped giggling, I looked right at him and blew the biggest bubble Red Falls had ever seen.
I look at the picture in my hand, the woman with the laugh and the wavy chocolate hair and the little girl in pigtails and wonder how the two could ever become such passing ships, black pirate flags waving under the shadow of a constant storm.
“This is insane,” I whisper, the words scratching inside like tiny pieces of glass. “How could they not talk about her? Did your father ever say anything?”
“No, Del. We never talked about Stephanie. I was only a year old when she died. You weren’t even born yet.”
“I know I’m getting neurotic about this… I just have this feeling that Stephanie’s death, Casey Conroy, and whatever happened after Steph’s funeral have something to do with the fight eight years ago.”
Patrick squeezes my shoulder. “Maybe. I don’t know. Your family has been through a lot. That fight could’ve been about a million other things. Stephanie wasn’t even alive eight years ago.”
“But why else wouldn’t they want to talk about her now?” I press. “Why don’t they ever talk about her? There were never any pictures of her in the house—not that I remember. Why are they all here in the closet like this? Even the pictures of Meg—wait.”
“What is it?”
“Megan. She was Steph’s best friend.”
“I guess it’s worth a try,” he whispers, kissing me once more before it’s time to sneak him back downstairs and out of the house.
I stay up another two hours to finish the diary. The entries span her later teens and become more sporadic with each passing page. Sometimes, she goes weeks or even months without writing. Other times, she writes frantic and messy, two or three times in one day.
I’m no longer unclear on whether Stephanie suffered from depression.
Saw the doc again today—Mom’s doc. More pills. He says they’ll stabilize my mood, get me back on track, but I feel like they just change my personality. And if my personality changes, then I’m no longer me, and the friends who like the old me and the man who loves the old me say good-bye.
They make me feel fuzzy, and they keep me up at night, but I guess the doctor knows what he’s doing so we’ll see.
In the meantime, it’s almost graduation. Dad said I could get whatever dress I wanted. Claire and Rachel are coming home for it. It’s exciting to think about new beginnings and all that, but it’s also frightening. Where are we going? When are we leaving? Casey is supposed to look for work in New York this month. If that doesn’t work out, we might just go all out and head to California. Why not? Sometimes I think I’d be much better at loving Mom from a nice long distance.
OK. She has her moments. Today was a good day. Tomorrow, we’ll see. And if doctor what’s-his-name can promise that his magic pills will keep me from turning into my mother, I’ll take the whole bottle.
Ah, here comes the sun. Better try to get some sleep. Casey’s taking me out late tomorrow night.
—S
And then, a few days later…
Mom keeps calling from downstairs that I’m going to be late for school. Whatever. Not going anywhere today. Haven’t slept in a million years. This sucks.
—S
There are more like that, leading up to the final entry. According to the date, it was written just a few months before she died.
I don’t care. I can’t care.
No matter what my mother says to me… no matter how loud she yells or how long she goes without speaking to my father and me, I always have C. And no matter how far away my sisters are, no matter how infrequent their visits and letters, no matter how many times they promise and forget and life goes on, there is always C.
In my life, in our years together, Casey Conroy is the only person who hasn’t let me down. Who hasn’t judged me or screamed at me or ignored me or completely forgotten my existence. He is the one I always come back to, the face burned into my heart that wakes me from the nightmares, carrying with him the rising sun, chasing away the dark. He has my heart and I his and when the world ends, the promise of him is all that matters.
But should the world end, he and I will no longer exist as he and I. And that’s what scares me the most. That’s what no one understands when they throw words at me like daggers, words like OBSESSION. If I’m obsessed with being loved, well, so be it. I’m obsessed. I’m obsessed with not ending up in a coma of misery like the rest of the world, so let them throw at me all the words they can invent. The words are useless, and I’ve no more use for them. I’m all out.
And so it is here, tonight, that I say good-bye, dear diary. Good-bye.
—Stephanie Delilah Hannaford
That’s it; the final entry. There are a dozen or so more pages, but they’re all blank. Nothing appears to have been torn out. She just… stopped writing. Said good-bye to the diary, just like she said she would. Then she stuck it under the floorboards and went on with her life, however little of it she had left.
The diary leaves me with almost as many questions as answers. What happened in the months between her final entry and her death? Did anyone know how sick she really was? Did she stay on her medication? What caused her heart to fail? Did Casey know? Did he stay with her through the worst of it, or did he disappoint her in the end like everyone else?
And if Stephanie was sick, and her mother was sick, what about Mom and Aunt Rachel? What about me?
I slide the diary back into the drawer and push my hand through the photos on the floor again, stopping at a large black-and-white of Mom and Rachel. They’re young—six or seven, maybe—and they’re dressed up, maybe for a wedding, or for Easter Sunday. They’re standing on the path leading from the sidewalk to the front of the house, and it’s lined with pots of flowers. They’re smiling, facing each other with big handfuls of flowers from the pots, and as I see the happiness in their eyes and the flowers and the sunshine, I recall the card from Mom’s tarot reading on our first night back in Red Falls.
The Six of Cups… childhood memories… it’s the nostalgia card.
I scoop the pile of pictures back into the envelope, tucking them into the drawer with the diary.
Tomorrow, I need to find Megan.
Chapter twenty
The day after Fourth of July, while the rest of the non-vacationing world returns to work, I stake out the Crasner’s parking lot and wait for Megan’s shift to end. She smiles and waves when she sees me, crossing the lot to my sidewalk bench.
“Hey, Delilah! Good timing.” She tips an open bag of chocolate macadamia cookies toward me. “Just made them. What’s up? Grocery day?”
I take a cookie. “Actually, I was hoping we could chat.”
“Everything okay?” she asks.
“Everything’s ok
ay,” I say. “Just tired. I was up late last night. Do you have time for a coffee?”
* * *
“I found some pictures in Nana’s closet,” I tell her after Em delivers our drinks at Luna’s. “Pictures of my mom and Aunt Rachel, and some of Aunt Stephanie.”
“I always thought your grandmother got rid of them,” Megan says, tears glazing her eyes. “She didn’t leave any on the walls after she died. Wow. You know, sometimes losing Stephie feels like a lifetime ago. Other times like it just happened yesterday. Today’s a yesterday kind of day.”
“What was she like?” I ask, eager for a perspective less personal than the diary’s.
“Stephanie was… intense. That’s the best word to describe her, Del. The best one.”
Megan has a lot of stories about my youngest aunt, some hilarious, some heartbreaking, others tame, two girls walking through town, watching a movie, laughing at something at school, eating French fries.
“What about later?” I ask. “Just before… I mean, when you guys were my age. And after.”
Megan looks out the window, tracing the rim of her coffee mug as a pair of moms passes by out front, two women wearing pink Vermont T-shirts, pushing strollers, laughing in the sunshine.
“Sweetie, how much do you know about Stephanie’s death?” Megan asks.
“Not that much. Just that she died from cardiac arrest at nineteen. I was so young when they first told me about it, so they left out most of the details. And now, they just don’t like to talk about it.”
Megan covers my hand with hers across the table. “That’s true, Delilah. She died from cardiac arrest. But she also had depression. She was on different medications. For a while… I don’t know. Stephanie was my best friend. But near the end of her life, we drifted apart. Even though she was seeing a doctor, she just wasn’t right. I don’t know if she was misdiagnosed or not taking her medication properly or what, but she was not the Stephanie that we used to know. She became intensely fixated on her boyfriend. Barely graduated high school. Didn’t know what to do with her life after that—it was all about him. I don’t know. Sometimes I think I could have been more supportive. More open-minded about her relationship with Casey instead of worrying about how much time they spent together. I should’ve known that she was sick. I should’ve been able to help her. It still haunts me, Del. I didn’t know how to be her friend anymore. As much as I wanted to love her, I had no idea how to do it.”
I wish I could show Megan the diary, but I know it would only make it harder for her, seeing how scattered Stephanie had become. How little she mentioned Megan or her other friends. How possessive she was about Casey. Obsessed, just like her last entry said.
“Whatever happened to her boyfriend?” I ask.
“Casey stayed with her all the way through it. He wasn’t a bad guy or anything. Her death really knocked the wind out of him. He left town soon after the funeral. Went to Los Angeles, last I heard. None of us really kept up with him.”
Tears move across my eyes like storm clouds over the lake, spilling to reveal what’s in my heart—disappointment that Megan doesn’t know more about Casey. Sadness for my aunt Stephanie. Sadness for my mother and Aunt Rachel and their parents.
“You know, after everything,” I say, wiping my eyes with a napkin, “I can’t believe Mom and Rachel would leave their friends here in Red Falls, even if they were mad at their mother. I mean, you were here. And Jack and everyone else who knew us. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Megan squeezes my hand. “I don’t know why you guys left, Delilah. I never knew the details of that night. Even now, Rachel doesn’t want to talk about it, and we’ve spent a lot of time together these past few weeks. You have to remember that once your mom and Rachel left Red Falls for college, I really only saw them on their school breaks. I was always closest with Stephanie, and when she got sick, everything changed. After her death, I still spent time with your mom and Rachel during the summers—especially after you were born. But when they didn’t return that year, we simply lost touch.”
“But why? Why couldn’t anyone pick up the phone or send an e-mail?”
Megan shrugs. “It’s complicated. I think when bad things happen—whether someone dies or people argue or split up—you get to a point where it’s just too hard to go back. There’s so much lost. So many versions of the truth. So many versions of how things might’ve turned out differently. We all long for what could have been, Del. For some people, it’s just easier to move forward and try to forget.”
“But you didn’t do anything wrong. Why did they stop talking to you?”
Megan takes a sip of her coffee, looking back out over Main Street. “Unfortunately, when families fight, lots of people get caught in the tide. It was just one of those things. Your grandmother was a tough old bird. She made it known that she wasn’t going to talk about it, and that was that. We lived here in Vermont with her. I’m sure if I was in Pennsylvania with you guys, I would’ve stopped talking to your Nana instead.”
“There’s still something I don’t understand. I know Stephanie died of cardiac arrest, but what made her heart stop in the first place? Was it the medication?”
“I’m not sure exactly.” Megan finishes the rest of her coffee. “I’m sorry, Del. I really think you should talk to your mom about this, you know? It’s not that I don’t want to talk about Steph, but I feel like I might be trespassing a little bit here.”
I nod. “I understand. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. It’s just that my family is really great at burying things and pretending to move on.”
Megan smiles. “Maybe you think they’ve buried things, but remember, everyone has a different way of coping, and as simple as it might look on the outside, there are usually a lot more layers to a story. Take us, for example.” She lowers her voice, nodding toward Luna behind the counter. “When we lost my dad a few years ago, Mom completely threw herself into this coffee shop. We all accused her of being in denial about his death—of avoiding her own grief. Then one night she sat us down and showed me this notebook where she and my father had sketched out a business plan and pages of notes and figures and maps. The two of them had been saving for years to open the shop together. It was something they always dreamed of and now, after his death, she finally had the money. She opened it in his memory. We had no idea. We just thought she was crazy.”
I look over at Luna, wiping down the counter and the nozzles on the steamers, chatting with customers, making the schedule, and I wonder how much we don’t see. How much of our lives we witness and accept as truth when the rest of the iceberg—the heaviest, bulkiest part—is buried and invisible.
“Just something to consider, Del,” Megan says. “You know, her birthday is coming up. She would’ve turned thirty-seven this year.”
“I know. It’s this Saturday.” I think about that first diary entry, written on the night of her sixteenth birthday.
“Yep. Maybe that’s a good opportunity for you to talk to your mom. Give her a chance, okay?” Megan smiles. She remembers when things were still okay with my family.
So do I.
We all long for what could have been.
Chapter twenty-one
On the morning of what should’ve been Stephanie’s thirty-seventh birthday, I wake from a nightmare, the image of my late aunt’s face haunting me even in the bright white of day. All of Red Falls was there in my dream world, all gathered around the lake, everyone digging holes in the sand. When I got closer, I saw that they were burying the things we set aside for our estate sale—Nana’s trinkets and clothes and Ollie’s chew toys. The lake was black sludge and smelled like tar, and Mom stood on a huge platform above it with a torch. She lowered it as the people cheered, the lake igniting like an oil field in the desert, black smoke rising around her as the flames shot up to the sky. Then she appeared on the shore, walking over the mounds of Nana’s things with a bundle of papers. She gave it to me and told me to throw it in the fire, and when I did, I saw t
he Stephanie pictures. I tried to pull them from the flames, but they were burning too fast, the edges curling and melting as the girl in the photos screamed for me to save her and the townspeople looked on, clapping.
I shake off the nightmare, pulling my clothes on and blowing away the invisible smoke. From the drawer with the diary, I take the envelope of pictures into my hands, carrying it down the stairs, one step at a time, hoping the words come to me before I need to speak them. When I reach the kitchen, Mom and Rachel are already near the door, Mom holding her car keys and Rachel a pot of small pink roses.
“Are you going to the cemetery?” I ask.
“Yes, hon,” Rachel says when Mom doesn’t answer. “We’re going to see Stephanie.”
“I know it’s her birthday,” I say.
Mom finally speaks. “We were just going to drop the flowers off and… I don’t know. Say a few words, maybe. I’m sorry, Delilah. I didn’t think you’d be up this early. We won’t be gone long.”
“I found some pictures upstairs.” I sit at the kitchen table, setting down the envelope as Mom and Rachel pull up chairs.
“What do you mean?” Mom asks. She and my aunt share the same sharp and shallow breaths, in and out like a seesaw. “What pictures?”
I swallow down the lump in my throat as I take the envelope in my hands, releasing the flap and spilling the photos across the table like water. Stephanie waves from her bike on top of the stack, brown hair blowing out behind her like she’s moving even now, flattened into a picture in her dead mother’s kitchen.
“I’m sorry… I just… I want to know about her. I want to talk about her. You guys are all so young and happy in these pictures and now she’s gone and Nana and Papa are gone and it’s just us and I want to know where we came from.”