Chapter 14 - Laura Finally Read Eleanor’s Journal
Peter eventually gave Laura Eleanor’s remaining journals.
Laura waited months before opening them.
She was tired of secrets.
But she was also tired of defining her mother only by the worst chapter
of her life.
The journals contained ordinary things.
Recipes.
Complaints about traffic.
Notes about Laura’s school plays.
Arguments with Samuel.
Rose House budgets.
Fear.
Regret.
One entry described the day Eleanor realized Margaret had not
intentionally stolen the charity money.
I spent years needing Margaret to be guilty because it made my anger
easier to carry.
Laura stopped reading.
She thought of Victoria at the gala.
Then herself.
Each had arrived with a simple story.
My mother’s necklace.
Your mother stole it.
Your family lied.
Mine suffered.
Simple stories felt powerful because they gave pain a direction.
Truth was harder.
Samuel had done wrong without being the mastermind.
Margaret failed without stealing the money.
Eleanor protected evidence but also protected her husband.
Edward exploited everyone’s silence.
Peter extended the damage while trying to preserve Samuel’s memory.
Victoria weaponized a necklace because she believed a false inheritance
story.
Laura repeated her own family myth to Sophie.
Nobody escaped complexity.
At the end of the journal, Eleanor had written about Sophie as a baby.
Laura did not know her mother had met Sophie only three times before
becoming too ill.
She found one sentence:
I hope Laura teaches that little girl to ask questions we were too
afraid to ask.
Laura cried.
Sophie found her.
“Bad crying?”
“No.”
“Good crying?”
“Complicated crying.”
Sophie climbed beside her.
“That’s a thing?”
“It is now.”
Laura read the sentence aloud.
Sophie smiled.
“Grandma sounds smart.”
Laura laughed.
“Sometimes.”
May you like
That word mattered.
Sometimes.
