Until the Day I Die(15)

I pull out the last journal on the right, running my fingers over the gold stamped lettering on the cover. February 2019.

But wait. The last journal should be March. Dad died on March 20—the first day of my senior year spring break—and he would have already filled out a little over 50 percent of the book. Or 0.612903 to be exact.

I check the previous years. Then this year’s journals. January, December, November, October, September, August . . . The rest are here, in perfect order, only there’s no March. I tear through his desk and the console behind it. In the living room, I look in the drawer in the coffee table and in all the nooks and crannies of the antique secretary. No journal.

I run upstairs, two steps at a time. My heart is thumping now. It has nothing to do with the error message; that I can handle, even if it gets me in trouble. I just don’t like the idea of my dad’s last journal, containing the last words he wrote, being lost.

I fly into Mom and Dad’s bedroom, check the dresser, nightstands, closet, even under the bed. Nothing. The bathroom’s clear too. I walk back out into the hall. I can hear a car door slam behind the house. Arch and Gigi. Or maybe Sabine.

And then I remember something from that terrible March night.

A nurse had taken Mom and me from the waiting room at the hospital in Alexander City to a smaller room down the hall. About a half an hour later, the doctor had come in and told us Dad hadn’t made it. But before he came in, while they were still trying to save him, a young female police officer had stopped by. She told Mom that an officer would have Dad’s car towed anywhere she chose. Then she held out a white garbage bag full of items they’d collected from the car.

On our way back to Birmingham, I sorted through the items. A windbreaker with the Auburn logo, an insulated coffee cup, a beige umbrella, his duffel, a little stuffed spider Beanie Baby. The spider Beanie Baby had been a gift for me, I knew. An inside joke referring to the time a spider bit me. I’d taken it out of the bag and slept with it that night. But there was something else in that white bag.

His March journal. I remember it clearly.

“Shorie, darling,” I hear Gigi call from downstairs. “Come help me clean up this mess!”





12

ERIN

I wake as Ben wheels the truck into my driveway and push matted hair off of my sleep-swollen face. I try to put the events of last night into some kind of order, but I can’t. My headache has morphed into a massive body ache, my mouth tastes bitter, and my brain seems only to be able to recall flashes of things. Shorie’s angry face. Loud music. Me screaming about Jax. Nothing hangs together the way it should. Did I really drink that much? It doesn’t seem possible.

I focus hard on our white mission-style stucco house with its chestnut trim and leaded glass windows. There has never been such a welcome sight. Perry and I bought this house when Shorie was two, a quirky fixer-upper in a south Birmingham suburb called Hollywood. Like in its namesake, stately stone English Tudors and Spanish missions line the shady streets. We’d loved it in this house with its uneven, creaky oak floors, thick plaster walls, and every staircase, door, and banister built to last forever. We would have lasted forever too, if we’d had the chance.

The weather-warped door of the detached garage just beyond the house catches my eye. Perry always meant to upgrade to one of those doors that looked like real wood. He never got around to it, and I sure as hell won’t be doing it anytime soon. Anyway, who gives a shit about what your garage door looks like? Only people who’ve never had to deal with any real problems.

“Erin.” Ben clears his throat, and I snap back to the present.

“Here we are,” I say absently and gather my purse and the tote with my toothbrush and clothes from yesterday. I’m still wearing the flamingo pajamas and an Auburn Tigers T-shirt.

This morning, I woke in the hotel room to the sound of someone knocking on my door. When I opened it to Ben, he said it was almost checkout time, then asked if he could come in. Something had happened last night, he said, didn’t I remember? When I said no, he filled me in. I’d taken his truck, abandoned it in a parking lot next door to a fraternity house, and gotten into some kind of an altercation with Shorie. He’d received a call from Shorie and Ubered over to us.

I drank the water Ben handed me, then downed a cup of coffee. How could all that have happened without me remembering? He said blackouts are something that can just start happening to a person, especially someone who’s been under a great amount of stress, anytime, with no warning, and I should be careful. He seemed worried.

None of it sounded right to me, but I was scared, very scared, and so I meekly let him drive us home. Now, as Ben swings the plastic tubs we emptied at Shorie’s dorm out of the bed of the truck and stacks them, he seems totally shut down.

“Just leave them here,” I say.

Ben holds on to the tubs. “I can bring them in.”

“I don’t want them inside.” My voice is an exasperated growl. “We keep them in the garage.” Then I realize I said we, and there’s no “we” anymore. There’s only me. I am alone. My resolve breaks, and I dissolve into tears. Down go the tubs, and I feel Ben gently touch my arms. “I’m so embarrassed,” I sob. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I really appreciate everything you did. I’m sorry for whatever . . . whatever it is I—”