“Busy. Victoria planned something at the club. Maybe next week.”
Maybe next week. That phrase had been the soundtrack of my life.
Maybe next week for dinner. Maybe next week for my school play. Maybe next week for a father-daughter breakfast. Maybe next week for anything that made me feel like I belonged.
I called Meredith. She answered with a sigh.
“What do you want?”
“It’s my birthday.”
“I know. I left you a note.”
“You called me a freak.”
“I’m getting my nails done for tonight. I can’t talk.” Then she hung up.
I sat on my bedroom floor with my mother’s memory box in my lap.
Inside were a silver bracelet engraved with S and C forever, a dried rose from her funeral, a photograph of her laughing in a garden, and the letter she wrote three weeks before she died.
“My darling Sierra,
If you are reading this, I am no longer there to tell you in person. So let me say it now as many times as I can fit on this page.
You are loved. You are worthy. You are the best thing I ever did in my life.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you don’t deserve to be happy. Not your father. Not anyone.”
I read it until the letters blurred.
At the bottom of the box, beneath the bracelet, I found a photo I had never noticed before. It was my mother standing beside another woman at a company event. Both young. Both smiling.
On the back: Catherine and Eleanor. Hartwell Industries grand opening, 1999.