An outlet for the words she wanted to convey about her emotions and health. It all went down in here—times in her life when she desperately needed strength, and prayer didn’t seem to be enough. She’d spoken the prayers, then recorded them in these journals. She wasn’t entirely sure why she kept them around. It wasn’t like she wanted to go back and revisit those days.
Then again, the notebooks were full of everything that had ever made her who she was. The best and worst moments of her life.
She’d sat down today to simply write one sentence about having met Amanda, Hailey, and Jesse. What she ended up with was three pages about it. She smiled as she wrote each memory, right down to the drip-castle building and their reaction to meeting Tug and The Wife.
She closed the notebook with a sigh, then tucked it into the end of the stack on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. All the rest of the volumes were spiral in, only the page edges showing, tattered and wavy from the changing humidity in the house through the seasons. It didn’t matter, though, because those pages represented time. Someday when she couldn’t remember, maybe she’d read them all again.
The ladies at the church had been the ones who’d inspired her to start journaling again. They’d given her a beautiful leather-wrapped diary. Long leather laces tied around it. Her name had even been embossed in gold on the front.
Of course, she’d never written in that one. It was too pretty to use. It still sat there on the end table as decoration, but seeing it had willed her to write sometimes.
She picked it up, the fine leather supple in her hands. So much had come as a result of this gift, yet no one would ever realize it by looking at it. She unwrapped the leather laces and bent the journal between her hands, thumbing the empty pages. Softened gold lines and the brown outline of a compass in the top corner skittered as the pages flipped.
Still carrying the leather journal, Maeve gathered a couple of things from the backyard, then opened the side gate and set out across the sand to meet with Amanda and her kids for lunch.
The sun warmed her shoulders. She was still a good hundred yards off when Hailey and Jesse screamed out her name.
“Miss Maeve!” Their hands in the air, they sprinted toward her like they’d been waiting forever for the reunion.
Choking back a joyful sob, she crouched to catch them as they flung themselves into her arms. “My goodness!” She laughed as Jesse tangled in her skirt. “That is a greeting.”
“We’ve been watching for you.”
Jesse’s hand clung to hers. His skin was as soft as the leather-bound journal she still held tight against her body.
Hailey slipped her arm around Maeve’s waist, tugging on her until she knelt down. Hailey hugged her neck, the young girl’s fingers gently patting Maeve’s skin at the pace of a tiny heartbeat. The sudden outpouring of love made her almost lose balance for a moment, as if the surrounding air had become so light that they swirled.
“Wow. I was excited to see you too!”
“I’m sorry.” Amanda had come over in the midst of the welcome. “They can be a lot of energy sometimes.”
“No. I’m not complaining. It was so sweet.”
Maeve watched as Amanda looked at her children like they were a miracle. She’d said she wouldn’t ask or push, but she wondered about all the details between Amanda and Jack.
“We’ve been collecting shells. We’ll bring them up to show you,” said Hailey. The brother and sister fled back to their sand fort to play.
Amanda and Maeve walked up to the sheet tucked in the sand.
“I hope you don’t mind if I ask, but how long ago did you lose your husband?” Amanda asked as she sat down.
Maeve sat, too, and pulled her knees up. “I lost him in 1995.” She looked at the beautiful young woman sitting there. “We were married longer than you are old.”
“Jack and I were only married for five years when he…when he didn’t come back.”
“The length of the marriage doesn’t make it hurt any less.” Maeve clamped her hand to her wrist around her knees, leaning back. “Jarvis was a good man. Everyone liked him. He worked on all the boats around here. Back then Tug was a commercial fisherman. That’s how the two of them became friends.”