Page 172 of Mess With Me

“There were diaries in that room, belonging to the man Chester called his grandfather.”

“He wasn’t?” Dad asks, aghast.

“He wasn’t,” Sasha says. “He was, as it turns out, someone we are all deeply familiar with. Though we never met him ourselves.”

A buzz goes across the table. Jude leans in. Dad sets his water down.

Blake frowns like this is a business conundrum. “Who was he?”

“Rather than tell you, I’m going to read a passage from the first diary entry we read today. I think it’ll become clear very quickly.”

She clears her throat, pulling up her phone, where we transcribed the paragraph we read this afternoon. Now that I’m hearing it for the second time, I’m surprised I needed to read more than the first sentence to figure it out.

“Life is so bereft,” she begins, “that I ask myself with every passing breath why I continue living it at all.”

Jude sits back in his chair, his hand clapping over his heart.

“If I had anyone I could speak to now—and I do not—I would ask myself why I have taken such a great risk and settled so close to where the most unthinkable moment in my life occurred. Worse yet than the day we left the symbol of our love with women an ocean away.”

“My God,” Dad says.

Jude lays a hand on Dad’s. “Keep reading.”

“But it is that very beating heart that keeps mine still alive. Her existence on this earthly plane gives me hope that God forgives us for what we did; that my love resides in Heaven, safe, happy, and waiting for me one day. While I don’t want to breathe a breath of air if she doesn’t, I must. And I will, for the child we share, though she shall never know my name.”

Sasha lowers her phone. “The entry is signedJ.E.Q.”

Everyone around the room lets out a different sound at the revelation that Chester’s Joseph was ourJEQ; Eleanor’s James, residing under a secret identity in the very town where he lost her. Gasps. Amazed words. A sob from Chelsea.

“He stayed here,” Jude says, his voice astonished. “Why?”

“Because he found Clea,” Chelsea says, her eyes wet with tears. “Somehow, he found her. Was she here with him? Why else would he stay in Quince Valley where the police wanted him for murder?”

“Does he talk about the murder?” Jude asks.

“We read that and called this meeting,” Sasha says. “Then we read the rest of that book. He talks about what really happened that day. And how he came back to the room to find the love of his life already gone.”

Dad looks at none of us when he says, “He can be exonerated.”

“There are more diaries,” Sasha says. “Boxes and boxes more. I think all the answers we might ever want will be in those books.”

Then Jude says the one thing I think is the most true out of all of this. “This was James’ story, this whole time, wasn’t it? Eleanor was the one the world lost, but James was the one who made sure she was never forgotten.”

There’s hardly a dry eye at the table as we all look around at the people we love. Separate conversations, some teary, break out across the table.

Except for Dad. He must be processing everything, because he sits quietly, his hands tight on the table.

But then Sasha glances down at me, and my attention’s back on her in an instant. She clinks her glass, and everyone quiets, their eyes back on her.

Nerves suddenly dance across my skin. She never told me about anything else.

Sasha smiles. “Not to take away from this moment, but I hope while I still have the floor you’ll all indulge me by letting me share a little more news.”

I have no idea what she’s going to say. My mind goes everywhere all at once, from she’s going to tell them our marriage was fake and she’s moving back to New York to—

“Griffin and I are moving out of state.”

Dad knocks his water over. “What?” He sounds truly devastated, hardly noticing Cass coming over to mop up the puddle.

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