Part Three
''Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed," says the LORD."
-Isaiah 54
One of the good things about going to the late Christmas Eve service was that once it was over, it was pretty much time to call it a night.
Sarah said goodnight to Chrissy and Kate and her Mom. They could tell something had been bothering her during the service, so everyone treated her pretty carefully, conscious of not upsetting her. Sarah thought that they all were really not too bad. After all, it wasn't their fault that she was the round hole in this square peg family. They did try.
Sarah settled down into the covers and was thankful that she had managed to at least get marginally under control during the service. After all, there was nothing to be gained by taking all of this church stuff too seriously.
She lay very quietly in bed, tired but somehow not very sleepy. She wondered about why some people had access to these messages from God, and other poor slobs like her were left to their own devices.
Sarah couldn't get her mind off that stupid journal. She had spent a year and a half forgetting it even existed, and now she couldn't get it out of her head. She tossed and turned, and at every toss and every turn came face to face with that journal and the last letter to her father.
Sarah thought that of all the unforgivable sins in the world, she was perhaps guilty of one of the worst. And to make it worse, she couldn't tell anyone.
Even though it made no sense, she was sure that in some way, her letter was part of the string of events that had sent her father off to his death. It all seemed part of a long sequence of connected events, all eventually pointing to the crash. The assignment to read the diary in the first place. The ridiculous assignment to create her own journal Getting so caught up in herself that she imagined she had some sort of 70+ year old pen pal. Following her new friend's advice, and writing that letter to her father. And then never having the chance to take it all back and to make it all right.
The last thing he probably even thought about her - if even thought anything - was what an ungrateful daughter she was. She knew that she could never let that happen again to the people she had left. No matter what she did with her strange life, that letter would be her legacy.
She wondered where on earth that stupid journal had wound up. She thought it had to be somewhere in this room.
Sarah got out of bed, turned on the light, and started to look through her closest. She tossed shoes and sweats and countless dirty clothes out of the closet and onto the floor, but there was no sight of the journal. She did similarly with her drawers, and pretty soon the floor was a rich mess of all sorts of various clean and dirty clothes. She crawled onto the floor and looked under the bed, moving aside an old science project poster board that had somehow wound up there. She considered giving up. But she then saw, way in the back and lodged between the bed and the wall, what looked like a book. She slid under the bed and reached for the book. She knew immediately it was the journal, because it had one of those pebbly covers and was one of those books that you used for compositions.
Sarah got out from underneath the bed, climbed back on the bed and held the book in her lap. Somewhere in all of the hysteria, it must have gotten knocked behind the headboard, and there it had sat for a year and a half until now.
She considered just putting it back there, or maybe saving it for the fireplace tomorrow. She stroked the cover and thought back to two summers ago. She remembered how uncertain she had been about high school - which now seemed like a piece of cake - but how secure she had been in the sameness and boringness of Herndon, the place where nothing really bad ever happened.
She remembered that Anne had gone back after a couple of years, reread her diary, and had been embarrassed at how childish it seemed. She started to flip through the pages, catching an entry here and another one there. She read a few and decided that she definitely would be burning this thing tomorrow. Much of what she had written sounded like it came from a spoiled kid without a real care in the world.
Sarah wondered again whether Anne would have written what she did in her diary if she knew she would be dead within a matter of months. Sarah imagined that the only way that Anne could have survived from day to day and to even get up in the morning would have been to almost pretend that the situation in the attic wasn't even real. To assume that the worst would never happen. To assume that everything would work out in the end. How did she manage to keep her faith in the face of unspeakable horrors?
Sarah closed the book with a sigh. There were no answers in this journal. Just some foolish words by a young girl. She began to cry and threw the journal against the wall.
As she threw the journal, the pages fluttered and a single sheet of paper that had been stuck in the back came loose from the book and came to rest on the floor in the comer. She walked over to pick it up, but when she reached down to get it, she saw the handwriting. Her legs went weak, and she sank to the floor, clutching the page. Slowly, she began to read.
My dear daughter.
I will need to be quick because I've got to run and get this plane. I’m sorry we didn't have a chance to talk before I left, but we can talk when I get back.
I will stick this note in the back of the journal. OK, I know what you are thinking. No I DID NOT read anything in your journal. I will just sneak into your room, and, keeping my eyes tightly closed so that I do not see a single word of journal, stick this in the back. I swear.
There are a couple of things about having children that I didn’t know until I had my own. I wish I had known these things earlier, but that's life. You know what you know when you’re supposed to know it.
The first thing. No matter what, you will always be my daughter and I will always love you. You can say anything that you want. It doesn’t matter. You can live in another country. It doesn't matter. You can write me letters (OK, cheap shot). It doesn't matter. From the moment the doctor put you in my arms oh so many years ago, I was hooked. And there's nothing you can do to change it.
The second thing. Teenagers always say terrible things to their parents. Don’t get me wrong. That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. I remember some the things I said to your grandparents when I was much much younger, and can't believe I could have been so unfeeling. But refer to point one.
The third thing. You are wrong about the tucking in part. I still do it every night after you are asleep. Hah.
Lastly. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Yes, your sisters have accomplished a great deal. But so will you. You have a gift for doing the unexpected, for grabbing the moment, for finding the unusual in the ordinary, for breaking a way from the predictable. This gift will serve you well. Trust me.
Talk to you when I gel back.
Love, Dad
Sarah felt like a huge weight had been lifted from her chest. She looked around the room, a room that only moments ago had seemed like a prison. A room that now looked like a home.
Sarah carefully put the letter back in the journal, got up and began poking around in her drawer. She found what she was looking for, and tightly grasped the small piece of purple-tinged shell in her left hand.
She grabbed a pen and began rummaging through her bookcase for the Anne's diary. She knew it had to be in here somewhere. She found it and flipped through the pages quickly, searching for the quote she remembered, the quote that had literally just popped into her head.
Sarah sat back on the bed, opened her own journal to the first blank page, and began to write.
December 25, 2002
Today's Anne Frank Quote: It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering, and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change - for the better, that this crue
lty will end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.
Dear Anne:
As my father used to say, "From your lips to God's ear."
Merry Christmas.
Your friend,
Sarah
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends