Chapter 16 - Renee’s Box
Three days later, Renee arrived with a box.
“I kept this because Vanessa would have thrown it out.”
Inside were journals.
Not Evelyn’s.
Vanessa’s.
Teenage handwriting covered the covers with song lyrics, magazine clippings, and glittering stickers.
Amara hesitated.
“I shouldn’t read her diary.”
“You’re right.”
Renee pulled out one loose page.
“But this was never private.”
At the top, teenage Vanessa had written:
LETTER TO MY FUTURE DAUGHTER
Amara stopped.
Renee handed it to her.
The paper trembled in Amara’s hands.
If I ever have a daughter, I will never compete with her.
Amara’s breath caught.
I will let her be prettier than me without making it mean I disappeared. I will let her have birthdays without dressing like the birthday girl. I will let boys her age look at her without needing them to look at me. I will never make her feel guilty for being young.
Amara sat slowly.
There was more.
Mom says I’ll understand when I’m older. I hope I never understand. I hope I remember how this feels.
Amara wiped her cheek.
“When did she write this?”
“After the formal.”
Renee sat beside her.
“Vanessa gave it to me.”
“Why?”
“She made me promise that if she ever became like Loretta, I’d show it to her.”
Amara looked up.
“Did you?”
“Once.”
“When?”
“Five years ago.”
“What happened?”
“She stopped speaking to me for three months.”
Amara stared at the letter.
“Why five years ago?”
Renee hesitated.
“Your thirteenth birthday.”
Memories returned.
A restaurant.
Vanessa wearing a sparkling gold mini dress after Amara had chosen a modest gold birthday outfit.
Waiters joking they looked like sisters.
Vanessa laughing too loudly.
Amara had forgotten how uncomfortable she felt.
“She was doing it already.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you stop her?”
“I tried.”
“No. Why didn’t anybody really stop her?”
Renee absorbed the accusation.
“Because challenging Vanessa is exhausting.”
Amara looked away.
Renee continued.
“And because we kept telling ourselves it wasn’t serious enough.”
“It was serious to me.”
“I know that now.”
Amara reread the letter.
The tragedy was not that Vanessa had never understood.
She had understood perfectly.
At seventeen she had understood with terrifying precision.
Then somewhere between seventeen and forty-three, fear had beaten memory.
“What happened to Loretta?” Amara asked.
“She died when you were little.”
“Did Mom forgive her?”
Renee thought.
“Vanessa says yes.”
“That doesn’t answer me.”
“No.”
Renee looked toward the window.
“I think Vanessa spent years trying to prove she had become everything Loretta wanted to be.”
“Why?”
“Because sometimes becoming like someone feels safer than admitting they hurt you.”
Amara folded the letter carefully.
“I want Mom to see this.”
“She has.”
“I mean now.”
Renee nodded.
That evening, Vanessa returned from work to find the letter on the kitchen table.
She recognized it immediately.
Her purse slipped from her shoulder.
“Where did you get this?”
“Renee.”
Vanessa closed her eyes.
“She promised me.”
“She promised to show you if you ever became like Loretta.”
Vanessa sat.
For several minutes, she said nothing.
Then she read her own teenage words.
Halfway through, her mouth began trembling.
Amara watched from across the table.
When Vanessa finished, she whispered, “I was so dramatic.”
Amara’s heart sank.
Even now.
Then Vanessa looked up.
Tears covered her face.
“But I was right.”
Amara stopped breathing.
Vanessa pressed a hand to her mouth.
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“I was right about everything.”
And for the first time, she cried without turning toward a mirror to see how she looked.
