“The inheritance is tied to fulfilling Paula’s dying wish,” he said.

I blinked. “I thought that was my mother’s dying wish.”

Mark got up from the table and walked down the hall and then into another room. When he came back, he was holding something in his hands. He leaned over the table and handed it to me.

“What is this?” I asked as I took the worn, leather-bound book from him.

“This was your mother’s,” he said. “I think you might want to take a look at it.”

I turned the brown book over in my hand and opened it to somewhere in the middle where my fingers happened to fall, and the binding spread open. It was a journal, and as I flipped through the pages, I saw each and every sheet of paper filled with my mother’s sprawling handwriting.

“My mother’s journal?” I asked as I looked up at my uncle with more questions than I had time to ask.

This book might have all the answers to the questions that I’ve carried around with me since my mother had died.

“Paula’s journal contains her dying wish,” Mark said as he reached over and pressed his finger against the front of the worn journal. “She entrusted me with it a few months before she died. She knew that things were getting bad, and I think that she knew her days were numbered. She wanted this journal to find its way to you, Lisette. Her journal tells what your inheritance is meant for.”

“You read it?” I asked, feeling invaded although I wasn’t sure why.

It wasn’t my journal, but I felt like I should have been the only one to see it.

“Yes,” he said. “I needed to see what I was risking my life to protect.”

Michael set his hand on my thigh and I looked over at him.

“I think you should take some time alone to read it then,” he said as he squeezed my knee.

I felt Adam and Rob stiffen around me as his hand mindlessly attempted to comfort me.

“You’re welcome to use the guest room,” Mark said as he pointed down the hall.

I took the book and got up from the table. I had come all this way to find answers, and now that I possibly held those answers in my hand, I was nervous.

Nevertheless, I got up and walked away, finding the guest room and perching on the edge of the bed with the book in my lap. I ran my fingers across the cover, which was so worn that it was soft. My mother had opened and closed this book countless times. I could tell because the spine was so broken that it flopped open like a rag doll. The pages all remained intact though, as if the defiance of each one to tear from the binding was a shouting battle cry. I started at the beginning and traced the letters of the date which was written in my mother’s familiar handwriting. She had started the journal in the month of August, and the “A” was scripted in a beautiful manuscript print that curled at the ends.

I missed my mother—so much.

Before I started to read the journal, I curled up onto the bed and wrapped one of the blankets around me. It wasn’t actually that cold inside of the house, but I felt cold. I felt as if there was a chill running through my bones. I looked out the window as day turned to dusk and I wondered for a second if maybe I shouldn’t have just listened to Michael. I could walk right back down that hallway now without reading this journal and I could toss it onto the table in front of my uncle and demand the inheritance money that was rightly mine. If there was some sort of condition to be met, I would argue that everything is so broken now anyway that it didn’t matter. I could just take the money, and the guys and I could get as far away from here as possible.

I was almost disgusted with myself for thinking about it, though. For thinking about taking the money and running. For abandoning my mother’s dying wish in exchange for peace and freedom for the four of us.

But then I remembered Julian, and I remembered how much I had wished that I had run with him when he asked me to run. He would still be alive right now if I had just listened to him and gotten the hell out of Charlotte when we should have.

That’s it, I’m not reading this, and I’m not staying here.

I stood straight up from the bed as if I had suddenly been electrocuted and I went confidently to the door with the intention of dropping this journal on the table and collecting my money. We would leave, all four of us, right now.

“Hey, where are you going?” Michael asked as soon as I had taken a step into the hallway and met him directly while he strode in to check on me.

How did he always know when I needed him? How did he always know when I was about to do something foolish or reckless and needed to be talked down off a ledge?

“I’m going to give this book back to my uncle,” I said.

“Your mother’s journal? Why?” he asked in confusion.

He was standing so close to me that I could smell the scent of his skin and it made me want to run away with him and forget about all of this even more than I already did.

“Don’t you want to know what her dying wish was?” he asked. “And what to do with the inheritance money?”

“No,” I said so pointedly that Michael could immediately tell that I didn’t mean it.

I sounded like a toddler getting ready to have a tantrum and I could tell that he knew it.

“Lisette,” Michael said as he took my hand and gently turned me back around to walk back into the guest room. “What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?” I asked in as plain of a voice as I could muster. “I’m giving the journal back and we’re getting my money and leaving.”

Michael shook his head at me as he led me back toward the bed and spun me around to sit back down on the edge of it. I sat there with the book in my lap looking up at him and it was hard not to divert my eyes from the truth that was staring back at me.

“You’re running away,” he said.

He was right; I was running away.

I shrugged. “So what if I am? It’s not like we all haven’t put in enough time and suffered enough loss. Maybe it’s time to run away now. Maybe running away is the smart thing to do.”

“I don’t believe that,” he said as he shook his head. “And neither do you.”

“You’re the one who said we should take the money and run,” I reminded him.

“Yep,” he said. “You’re right. You’re always right. Which is what I came in here to tell you. You should read the journal first, then make a decision. Don’t get me wrong, I still want to take the money and run. But I know you, and I know that you would never forgive yourself if you didn’t sit here and read what your mother wrote.”

I hated the fact that he was right. Just once, I wanted to take the easy way out. But he was right. Running would only seem easy for the first hour or the first day. After that, it would be a lifetime of torturing myself with regret. The look in my eyes must have changed, too, because Michael leaned forward, gave me a kiss on the cheek and a reassuring smile, and then left the bedroom, closing the door behind him. Then, I curled up once more with the journal in my hands.

And this time, I started to read.

4

Reading my mom’s journal was a very hard and emotional thing for me to do.

It was difficult to look at her handwriting without remembering how she held a pencil between her fingers. When I read her words, it was as if I could hear her voice, speaking them inside of my head, and it reminded me of how terribly I missed her.

The journal was dated with entries from scattered dates in chronological order, but mostly they were one continuous story with bits and pieces of random musings inserted throughout. She had started this journal several months before she had died and she must have known that something bad was coming, even then. Because from the very first page, she starts laying out what she wants her inheritance money to be used for.

Specifically, what she wants me to use it for.

She also had the foresight to know that her lunatic sister would try to come after it.