Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75142 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75142 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
A whistle broke us apart with a soft laugh.
“Guess we were giving them a show,” I said softly. My lips swollen and cheeks flushed.
“Let ’em see.”
“Since when did you become a rebel?”
“Since the girl of my dreams was in my arms.”
A rush of emotion hit my chest at those words. The girl of his dreams. No one had ever talked to me like that.
I rested my head against his chest as he drew me in closer. We swayed slightly as the sun fully sank below the skyline. I didn’t know where this was going or what was coming next. Next week, we’d both be at SCAD with a whole new college experience before us. Anything could happen. But I planned to revel in this feeling for as long as I possibly could. With a world of possibility between us.
6
SAVANNAH
PRESENT
A cloud of dust erupted out of a box. I fell over backward to escape it as I coughed violently.
My eyes burned as I straightened to a sitting position and stared at the pile of dusty boxes my mother had recommended I go through while I was here. I’d agreed because I hadn’t thought that I’d really left anything here after high school and college. Apparently, I’d been wrong. There were several large boxes full of my stuff. Too much to get through before I met Amelia for lunch.
I peered into the first box and found it full of old clothes. I removed my favorite pair of low-rise jeans with dismay. God, I hoped these never came back in style.
Well, most of this would have to be donated. It was a decade out of style. And even if I could get my ass into those jeans again, I wasn’t planning to wear them. I’d be damned if I had to go back to showing off eight inches of torso in a crop top.
I closed the dusty box back up and eased back onto my hands. My eyes scanned the half-full attic. I’d had no idea that my mother was a pack rat. She didn’t seem to throw anything away.
I hopped to my feet and walked over to my high school bedroom set. I ran a finger through the dust on the white four-poster. She’d clearly just moved it upstairs. There were four or five wildly out-of-date full bedroom sets that I picked out based on the headboards and the various mattresses.
The rocking chair that used to sit on the back porch for ages was up here. I moved the box that was on top of it to the floor, picked up the book underneath it, and sank into the chair, letting it lull me.
This was one of the few possessions that I’d coveted from my mother. It had belonged to her mother, and she hadn’t let her husband, Edward, get rid of it when they moved in together. I didn’t know what it was doing up here if she had fought so hard for it in the ’80s.
I glanced down at the small book in my hand. I flipped it over to look at the cover, but the dark blue leather binding revealed nothing. I cracked it open to the first page and stopped my rocking. The front page read Diary of Rebecca Charlotte Turner.
Turner.
That was my mother’s maiden name. Before she’d taken Edward’s last name of Montgomery. I’d gotten Reynolds from my dad. How old was this diary? Thirty years old?
The pages were yellowing from disuse and likely all the dust collected in the attic. I glanced at the door once and then turned to the first page. June 7, 1988 was scrawled in my mother’s neat hand. I skimmed the page. It was a rambling count of the beginning of her summer vacation and how her parents had brought her to Savannah the summer before she was to attend the University of Georgia. They barely had enough money to afford a room for the three of them for the summer, and she was miserable.
I gulped. That was the summer she’d met my dad. I only knew that because I’d begged Dad to tell me what happened, thinking the whole thing must have been so romantic at one point. I’d been young and dumb. He’d said they met the summer before college and my mother was pregnant by the new year. That was all he’d say about it after that.
I turned to the next page, and there was my dad’s name—Charles. Well, she called him Charlie. Ew.
“Josephine,” my mother called as she stomped up the attic stairs.
I snapped the diary closed. I probably wasn’t supposed to be reading this.
“How’s it going up there?”
“Uh, slow.”
My mother appeared in a ruffled baby-pink dress. Her hair was big and her makeup heavy. It was over the top, but it was so her.
“I actually found your diary.”