And I’d have to find a way to live with their permanent residence in my head.
Fighting down the nausea, I started in the bathroom. Most of everything in there could be thrown out. From there I moved on to her shoes and clothes. I tried to numb myself. To not associate any of the items with memories as I created donation boxes filled with her beautiful things.
Along the top of her closet were trinket boxes, hatboxes, and jewelry boxes. I pulled them all out and started going through them. I was there a few hours, putting aside items I thought Lorna might want to keep.
Pulling over the stool from Skye’s dresser, I stepped up onto it to make sure I hadn’t missed anything in the closet and found a large shoebox buried at the back. It was much too heavy to have shoes inside.
Dragging it down, its weight caused it to spill from my hands, and journals fell out, slamming to the carpet one after the other.
As I stared at them in surprise, I heard Jamie call upstairs to ask if I was okay.
I called back my affirmative and lowered to my knees, reaching for the leather-bound journals. There were eight of them. They were thick. And as I flicked open the pages, I saw they were all filled with Skye’s handwriting.
She’d kept diaries.
I had no idea.
I glanced at the door, wondering what I should do.
I shouldn’t read them. I should take them to Jamie and ask him what he wanted to do with them.
Instead, I tremored with adrenaline. Inside these diaries were possible answers. Why was Skye on antianxiety meds? What drove her to alcohol and drugs? Was it a genetic predisposition toward addiction, or was there another reason?
That roiling sensation moved through my gut—the one you get when you know you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing—as I fumbled through the diaries, trying to find the most recent entry.
Her last entry was days before her death.
What I discovered had me tearing through the diaries, traveling back through her words to four and a half years ago.
The entry was dated November, my freshman year of high school.
Her writing was messier in this entry. Instead of the beautiful, cursive handwriting in most of her entries, here it was spiky and frantic. It was a detailed entry of how she’d gone to a meeting with the powerful Hollywood producer Foster Steadman. How he’d tried to coerce her into sex in exchange for advancing her career. How she’d said no.
And how he’d taken what he wanted anyway and raped her on the floor of his office.
Tears poured out of me and I tried to stifle sobs as I read on through the diaries, reading her pain and violation and shame through the months. How small and disgusted she’d felt by her own silence. The fear of losing her career if she spoke up. Losing the money she needed to take care of Lorna and Jamie. How she was repulsed anytime she looked in the mirror and that alcohol and cocaine made her forget for a little while.
Her entries changed after rehab. Her self-loathing eased. She’d confided to Sheridan what had happened, and Sheridan had convinced her to go to therapy, which we never knew about. The therapy helped.
Until the hospital TV drama. The rape storyline. It dragged Skye right back to that place Foster Steadman had taken her four years before.
Shaking hard, I cast aside the last journal and stumbled into the bathroom to throw up. As I cast up my sorrow and bile, rage, guilt, and grief fought to overwhelm me.
We never knew.
None of us knew.
And as far as I was concerned, Foster Steadman was the real reason my beautiful Skye was gone.
I leaned back against the bathroom wall, trembling so hard, my back moved against the tile. Shock. I think I was in shock.
That’s how Jamie found me.
As he lowered beside me, I stared at him, at his concerned eyes and furrowed brow, and terror flooded me.
If I gave Jamie those diaries … would I lose him too?
12
Months Later
JAMIE
Twenty-one years old
There weren’t a lot of things I was afraid of in life. After Skye died, I was sure the only thing I feared was losing Jane and Lorna.
Somehow, I’d convinced myself that I wasn’t afraid of prison. Yeah, I was afraid of losing out on five to seven years of a life with Jane. I was worried about my future, my career, once I got out.