Page 125 of The Lost Book of First Loves

She shook her head. “I thought it might be on his bookshelf here, tucked away between some of his favorites, but I haven’t found anything except a bunch of interesting-looking books. What about you?”

“I’ve found a lot of bits and pieces. A few lunch receipts for the diner in town, a boarding pass for a trip to London last year, even a few Euros tucked away in a drawer. But no manuscript.”

June sighed. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this. It’s silly to pour so much energy and time into a wild-goose chase. He obviously either never wrote an unpublished book or he hated it so much he threw it away, like you have all been saying.”

“We had to try,” he said. “No stone left unturned, right? I have one more shelf to look through in the closet. If you want to go out with Loretta and Ali, I can join you when I’m done.”

“Okay.”

After he returned to the closet, she gazed around the room, hoping for inspiration to strike.

She hadn’t gone through his bedside drawers yet. That seemed far too intrusive. But as Beck said, she didn’t want to leave any stone unturned. Atop the bedside table, she found a framed picture of a blonde woman in a ranch coat and jeans holding the reins of a horse behind her in one hand and the hand of a small girl who had to be Alison in the other.

She looked kind, someone June thought she would have liked.

Ignoring her qualms, she opened the top drawer of the side table, where she found some reading glasses, a small jar of coins, a few more receipts, a random key on a ring.

She pulled the lower drawer open and found only one thing: a wooden box with a mountain scene etched on the cover of two peaks, pine trees and a small, beautifully etched deer grazing in a wildflower meadow.

The cover wouldn’t budge. Locked. She turned it this way and that, trying to find a mechanism to open it, with no luck.

Remembering the key from the top drawer, she retrieved it and inserted it into the lock then stared when it slid in perfectly.

She twisted it and heard the lock disengage. June caught her breath. This had to be it. The size was exactly right to hold one or two of his notebooks. It had to be here.

With a sense of anticipation curling through her, she opened the lid and stared down at two notebooks nestled inside a satiny lining, exactly like the journals except with blue covers.

Her pulse pounding, June traced the cover of the notebook on top that held only three words.

The Forgotten Road.

They had found it. She could hardly make sense of it all. She had been right. Carson had written another manuscript, one he never published.

With hands that shook, she pulled the notebook out of the box and opened the first page. There in his unmistakable handwriting were the words:

For Elizabeth.

In whose eyes I first saw the world.

In whose heart I learned the weight of love

This story belongs to us alone.

Scarcely aware of her actions, she set it back inside, picked up the entire box and carried it to the sitting area, where she could only stare at it, her mind racing.

For Elizabeth.Her mother. They had known each other. Had loved each other. The woman he wrote about in his journals, the one he referred to only as “E” had been her mother.

She wasn’t sure how long she stared at it. She was still there when Beck came back into the room.

He took one look at her and sank down next to her, taking her hand. “You’re pale as a ghost, Junie. What’s wrong?”

“I found it,” she whispered.

He looked more closely at the box in her hands and the words on the cover of the book inside. “You were right!” he exclaimed.

She handed over the book and he opened it to the first page, as she had done.

“For Elizabeth. Your mother,” he said, tone hushed. “Where did you find it?”

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