His bed isn’t made and has probably been that way since the last time we were here a year ago. Drumsticks and a guitar are on the floor in front of the open closet and hanging on the wall are his favorite band posters, along with some of my drawings. Old clothes are piled on a chair near the window that looks out to the side yard of my house and to the leafless tree that extends to my bedroom window. His room still smells like him, too, as if the scent of his cologne is embedded in the carpet fibers. I’ve always loved the smell, a simple scent bringing me instant comfort even in the darkest times. I wonder if I just stand here and breathe it in over and over again if it can help me forget what’s in the bag that’s secured over my shoulder.

Micha chucks his bag on the unmade bed and turns to me, rubbing his hands together. “Ready for our shower?” he asks with a devilish grin.

I drop my bag onto the floor. “Yeah, just give me a second to get my clothes out. They’re all buried beneath the wedding dress.”

He crosses his arms and gives me an apprehensive look. “Are you sure you’re okay? You’ve been acting really distracted and now you’re acting like you don’t want to be around me.”

I plaster on the most generic smile. Deep down I know he probably can read right through my bullshit. “I’m perfectly fine.” I place my hands on his shoulders and kiss his scruffy cheek. “But if you really want to know, I have some naughty little nighties in my bag that I don’t want you to see, otherwise you’ll make me try them on for you and they’re for after we get married.”

He cocks his head to the side, assessing me as he unzips his jacket. “Since when do you wear nighties?” He shucks off the jacket, balls it up, and tosses it on the dresser.

“Since Lila made me go into Victoria’s Secret and buy them.” Which isn’t entirely a lie. That actually did happen, but I do feel like a jerk for not coming straight out and telling him about the journal and drawings.

“You know, I’m really starting to like Lila. She’s such a good influence on you,” he says cleverly and then kisses me deeply, slipping his tongue into my mouth before pulling away. “If you’re not in the shower in five minutes, I’m coming back here naked to get you.”

“Deal,” I tell him and he heads out the door with a clean red T-shirt and jeans in his hand. As soon as the door shuts, I exhale loudly as I move my bag onto the bed. My fingers shake as I unzip it, and then I dig past the dress to the bottom of the bag and remove the box addressed to me, the return address from a Gary Flemmerton in Montana, but that’s not who it’s from, at least not according to the note inside the box, which was written by mother’s mom—my grandma. And it makes no sense, because I’ve never talked to her before, yet she took it upon herself to write me a note and send me some stuff of my mother’s. It’s weird, yet at the same time it’s got me thinking things I don’t want to think, like maybe I could meet her, but then again, do I really want to let more people in my life?

The note’s pretty simple and when I take it out of the box and read it again, I have the same reaction: confusion.

Ella, I know you don’t know me and I’m so sorry about that. There were things that you probably don’t understand, or maybe you do. Maybe Maralynn told you about me. Maybe she didn’t. But regardless, I was going through the attic, cleaning it out, and found some of her old stuff. I thought that you’d like to have it. I was going to keep it myself, but it’s just too painful. If you don’t want it, you don’t have to keep it. I just thought you might like it.

Then she signed her name in flawless cursive handwriting.

I’d only ever met my grandmother once and that was at my mother’s funeral. We didn’t say anything to each other and my father didn’t talk to her. It makes no sense why she’d give me her phone number like I’d been the one avoiding her all these years. She could have come up to me at the funeral and said something, but instead she sat across from my dad, my brother, and me in the barely occupied church while the minister preached about life after death. I think she might have smiled at me once, but I wasn’t completely sure at the time, nor did I care, because I was in a place where guilt was possessing my heart and mind. Plus, from what I knew about my grandmother, she wasn’t a very nice person.

I’d heard my mom talk about her maybe only five times and from what she told me, she was a horrible mother who treated her daughter like shit and who disowned my mom when she announced she was going to marry my dad. I guess my grandmother hated my dad and thought he wasn’t good enough for her. That pretty much sums up everything I know and I’ve never talked to her to be my own judge. I’m not sure if I want to. The woman has been a shadow in my life. Then again pretty much everyone was a shadow in my life except for Micha. Micha has been my light in my dark life. I smile to myself, noting that I should put that in the vows.

My expression instantly sinks as I realize that eventually I’ll have to write a page of heartfelt words and have to read them aloud, pour my heart and soul out to strangers. And when it’s all done, Micha and I will be husband and wife. I’ll have him forever and he’ll have me. Just thinking about it, my pulse increases and my heart slams against my chest. It’ll be just him and me forever, through thick and thin, through light and darkness. Knock it off. You love him.

I’m starting to freak out at the infinite future barreling at me, and I struggle to shake it off and concentrate on the box instead. I wedge my fingers through the opening in the top and remove the thing I’d been looking at when I’d been debating whether to go down to the cliff to get married. It’s a black leather book, the cover faded, and inside is my mother’s handwriting, stating her thoughts and feelings, her soul poured out across the many pages.

I open the journal as I sink down onto the bed. “For all of you who think you know me, you don’t,” I read aloud, running my fingers along the faded script. That’s just the first page, and even reading it again puts goose bumps on my arms. It’s as far as I’ve read and it seems like far enough, yet it doesn’t. I’ve always wanted to get to know my mom better, the mom who didn’t lie, didn’t have panic attacks, the one who smiled, laughed, told jokes. Did she lie in these pages? Should I care so much? What’s done is done. She’s gone, and reading her journal isn’t going to bring her back. Yet I do care.

“Ella.” The sound of Micha’s voice startles the living daylights out of me and I jump, slamming the journal shut.

He’s standing in the doorway, completely naked just like he warned me he would be. Lean muscles carve his stomach and cursive letters tattoo the side of his rib cage in black ink, the first lyrics he ever wrote, which he swears he wrote for me: I’ll always be with you, inside and out. Through hard times and helpless ones, through love, through doubt.

Setting the notebook down on my lap, I cover my mouth. “Oh my God. You’re naked.”

“Don’t ‘oh my God you’re naked’ me.” He enters the room and his muscles ripple with his movements, causing heat to pool inside my stomach.

“What if Lila and Ethan saw you?” I ask, lowering my hand to my lap.

“Then they saw me,” he replies, his eyes fastened on me as he shuts the door. “I told you I’d come in here naked and get you if you weren’t in there in five.” He rotates his wrist, pretending to check a watch that he’s not wearing. “And it’s been five.”

I cross my legs because just seeing him like that makes me want to lie down on the bed and spread my legs open so he can slip inside me. “Well, I was coming.”

“Oh, you will be in a few minutes.” A grin flashes across his face but then it vanishes when he notices the box next to me and the journal on my lap. “What is that?”

I bite my lip guiltily. I haven’t told him yet, because I know he’ll worry about what it’ll do to me. Still, I’m not going to lie to him now that he’s asked. “It came in the mail yesterday. It’s a box full of stuff… my mom’s stuff.”

His eyes widen and his lips part in shock. “What? Who’s it from?”

I tap the top of the box with my finger. “Well, it says from a Gary Flemmerton, but the note inside is… well, it’s from my grandmother… my mom’s mom.”

“Okay. Didn’t your mom say she was mean?” he asks cautiously.

“Yeah, sort of.” I smooth my hand over the journal with my chin tipped down. “But sometimes my mom lied about stuff.”

He shifts his weight and sits down on the bed beside me. Then he hooks a finger under my chin and elevates it so I’m looking at him. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asks, looking at me with concern and making me feel at home, at peace, okay with everything, even the bad stuff.

“I can’t just yet,” I tell him and when he starts to frown, I add, “Not because I don’t want to, but because I haven’t even looked through all the stuff yet to know what I want to talk about.”

“Do you want to go through it now? With me?” he asks with understanding.

“Not right now.” I suck in a slow breath at the idea of reading my mom’s thoughts, concerned what they’ll reveal, what they won’t reveal. Who was she? Was she like me once? “But I will… I just need to process stuff one step at a time.”

He nods, but still seems uneasy as he moves his finger away from my chin and puts his hand on his lap. “So who’s this Gary guy? And why did he send it to you all of a sudden out of the blue? And why did he send it for your grandmother?”

“I have no idea, but here’s the note.” I pick up the scrawled piece of paper from out of the box and hand it to him so he can read it for himself. After he skims over the note he looks even more perplexed as he sets it aside on the nightstand. “So she was just cleaning out the attic and thought, Hey, maybe I should send the granddaughter who I’ve never talked to a box of her mother’s stuff? Or have this Gary guy send it for her?”