Hey, my sister from another mister. First, let me apologize for dying. I’m really sorry. Sometimes life be like that. What’re you gonna do?
I shook my head and laughed. Oh, Sophie.
Please don’t hate me for saddling you with a summer full of Silas. I know he’s stiff and emotionally caged and a bit trust-challenged. And it takes about a thousand picks to break through his ice. Lord knows I wouldn’t want to live with him again.
But I hope by now you’ve realized Billy is not who you’re meant to be with, Lem. It’s Silas. It’s always been Silas. And it always will be.
I paused. Sophie knew?
He’s loved you since the moment his body thrummed with hormones. Maybe even before. But not just loved. Ached. Yearned. Lived for. You get the picture. And no, he’s hardly mentioned you since high school because, again, emotionally caged—but a twin doesn’t need words to know what her other half is feeling. He didn’t move across the country just for a roping scholarship. He ran from his feelings for you. And anytime he came home for a visit,his heart would break all over again. So eventually, he stopped coming.
I reread the last paragraph. It was exactly what Silas had said. And Momma. So maybe he hadn’t been playing me after all. Maybe he’d just gotten himself snarled up in a relationship with Christy that he didn’t know how to get out of. I’d done the same with Billy and it had taken years to cut myself loose.
Listen. I didn’t do this just for Anna. I’m sure Mom’s been all over you both about taking care of her and getting everything right. Mom’s just hurt that I didn’t leave Anna with her. She’ll get over it eventually—when she sees Anna thriving again. I’m sure mistakes have been made and will continue to be made. Heck, we both know I made plenty of them. But I want you to forgive yourself, Lem. Anna will be okay. She’s got the two of you.
What must Sophie think of us now that we’d lost Anna? But I couldn’t think about that or I’d never finish the letter.
And, if you fell for my frustrating, pig-headed, devoted, adoring, handsome brother, just know that Jenny will get over that too. I’m the one who died, and this was my evil plan all along. Not dying. Just using it to get you and Silas together. What I’m saying is, you’ve got my blessing all the way from heaven. If Mom gives you any lip, remind her you two have the endorsement of a verified angel. That trumps any and all of her opinions.
I chortled, wet-cheeked.
In all seriousness, I hope you did, Lemon.I hope you fell so hard that you’ll never recover. Because I know if you’ve allowed yourself to do that—there’s no doubt Silas has loved you back even harder.
And if somehow you fell in love and you’ve lost him—though I don’t think that’s possible—you have to fight for him. Fight hard. Harder than you’ve ever fought in your life.
Fight like a girl.
She drew the breast cancer symbol next to the motto we’d all lived by the last year of her life.
Fight better than I did. Because Silas really does love you.
He always has. And so have I. All to pieces.
Forever.
Until we meet again,
Soph
This had been her plan all along? Why was I surprised? It was so…Sophie. My chest broke into a shaky laugh and I sat there for a moment rereading it.
On the third run through, I noticed anarrow under her signature, pointing to the back. There was more. I flipped the page over.
P.S. Silas almost told you how he felt once. The folded note is his, from high school. He was going to give it to you at the beginning of our senior year, right after The Fated Football Game—as we Duprees like to call it. But Billy gotto you first.
My trembling hands struggled to untuck the corner of Silas’s letter. I smoothed the creases against my leg.
I snorted at his last name. As if I wouldn’t have known who he was if he hadn’t specified. As if he hadn’t been one of my best friends in the whole world. Silas always had been a man of few words. But I was beginning to learn there was always a story behind his silence. I folded the note as easily as if we were sitting in seventh grade. Muscle memory, I guessed. Then I chewed my lip, regret enveloping me.
I had broken his heart. Probably a hundred times over. But I didn’t have to hurt him anymore. This could be a new beginning. One where Silas didn’t associate Clementine Shepherd with gut-wrenching heartbreak. One where my last name became Dupree and I loved him so hard that all the past hurts became nothing but pinpoints of light that had led us to each other.
Hope filled my chest for the first time in a week and a half and after a few seconds of letting that feeling settle, peace spread through my entire body—from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. A peace I’d never known until that moment. Call it a sign. Call it Sophie’s presence. All I knew—all that I was certain of—was that Sophie was right.
Silas and I belonged together.
I picked up my cell and scrolled tohis number. I unblocked him and almost pressed call. But it would be better if I did this in person. You can’t pepper kisses all over someone’s face, neck, and jaw over the phone. Or shove them up against a wall, jamming your body as hard against theirs as you could get, while running your hands down their muscled chest. And I wanted to do all of that and more. I opened the Find My Friends app, my fingers tapping on my knee as his location updated.
But then my stomach took a large dip.
