Before I Let You Go(108)

“It’s been great being here, Lexie. But this isn’t my life. I committed to a life with Robert. I need to go back to it,” she says quietly.

“Why do you always put him first?” I snap at her, and I push my plate away from me with force. “You always did this to us. You always chose what he wanted over what we needed, and—”

“A few days, you say?” Sam’s steady, deep voice cuts through my rapidly escalating hysteria, and Mom and I turn to him. He gives me a smile, all tied up in a pointed glance, and I have to take a deep breath. Let him help. Let him stop the argument. Let him be on your side. He understands.

“Yes,” Mom murmurs. “Robert booked the ticket for Friday.”

“Well, then,” Sam says lightly, “I think you two should go out for dinner tomorrow night—baby free. Spend some quality time together, before Deborah has to leave. Okay? Daisy will be fine with me.”

“I’d like that,” Mom says, and she looks at me. “Lexie?”

It suddenly strikes me just how close I came to a screaming match with Mom. We’ve done this before on the phone in recent years, and had Sam not intervened with his offer of a childfree night, I know that dinner would have quickly escalated to ugliness and we may have lost all our recent progress. Mom has always become very defensive when anyone questioned her loyalty to Robert.

“Thanks, Sam. That would be great.”

I pull the pie back toward myself; it’s too good to waste. Mom’s eyes are on me. I glance up at her and she offers me a smile that’s at least part apology. The smile I return is weak, but it strengthens when I catch Sam’s steady gaze.

I guess sometimes progress really is two steps forward, one step back. But the important thing is that, overall, we’re all moving in the right direction.

As we’re getting ready for bed that night, I feel like a chapter of my life is coming to a close. Mom is going, and Sam and I are rebuilding, Annie is gone—and I need to let her go.

“What are you up to?” Sam asks me quietly, and I show him the journal. “What is it?”

“It’s Annie’s.”

“Oh?”

“The police brought it here a few weeks ago. They found it in her trailer. I’ve been saving it . . . I didn’t want to finish it. But I don’t know . . . it kind of feels like it’s time now.”

Once we’re tucked in bed together, Sam picks up the novel he’s reading, and I take a deep breath and I start to read my sister’s words. I don’t pace myself anymore—I don’t make excuses about needing time to process each entry—I just read. These are all stories that I know, but I need to connect with them again. It’s the ultimate empathy—I’m seeing our childhood through Annie’s eyes, and it is horrifying and magnificent. I see myself through her eyes—and as I read about those early years in the community, I’m no longer the sister who failed her, but the sister who saved her.

“Are you okay?” Sam asks me, again and again as the tears roll down my cheeks.

“Not really,” I reply each time. I feel like Annie is sitting on the bed next to me, too, quietly reading her stories into my ear. Every now and again I close my eyes, and I want to reach out and embrace her. One time, I reach across to that side of the bed, and I’m somehow surprised to find empty space there. It is still inconceivable that she is really gone.

It hurts, but I press on because I want to get to the last page—although I’m not quite brave enough to skip forward. Instead, I read faster—I stop savoring every word, and I just want to inhale her spirit through those pages, to see if I can find her secrets. To see if, as she feared, the way to understand her was locked within these pages.

It’s not long before I find it, and when I do, I’m not prepared. My silent tears turn to panicked sobs, and when I can’t bring myself to explain, I simply point to the page and let Sam read the entry for himself.

“Oh, Lexie . . .” he whispers. “Shit . . .”

It makes me feel sick, but I force myself to reread that passage several times before I can really grasp what she’s telling me.

“How did I not know?” is all I can think to say.

“How could you know?” Sam asks.

I think about the changes in my sister during those years. I think about the vibrant, spirited Annie whom I knew before I left the community—and the fragile, wounded girl who came out three years after me. I think about how every sense of innocence she had about life had been smashed out of her—and how obvious it should have been that something terrible had happened within those walls.

But it wasn’t obvious.

And she never told me.

And I never asked. Even when she hinted in the car on the way to rehab, I never pushed—and now I can see that I should have.

Did this secret kill my sister?

Not for a second will I entertain the idea that Annie would have lied about such a thing, not here, not in this book. This journal was such a precious thing to Annie that she carted it around with her for much of her life. She could never hold on to apartments or friends or money in the bank—but she held on to this journal—it was always connected to her memories of Dad. So, even with no way to verify it, and every reason in the world to doubt the very integrity of Annie’s word even at the best of times, I’m entirely convinced that this journal is a true account of her life. Her beauty shines through these words, but so does her pain.