He pulled out his phone, thumb hovering for a second over the airline app, and then he opened it.
When the confirmation pinged ten minuteslater, he exhaled slowly, tension easing in places he hadn’t even realized were knotted.
For the first time since he’d landed in Europe, the lighting looked right. Not because it was special on its own.
Because now, finally, it was leading him back to where he wanted to be.
FORTY-ONE
KRISTA
Friday
“Who knew Great-Grandma Isabel was such a prolific writer?” Robyn said, taking a stack of journals out of a cardboard box.
They were in the attic again, dust motes drifting through the slant of afternoon light. Boxes were stacked everywhere—Christmas decorations, old tax files, mismatched Tupperware—and now, in front of them, an entire carton labeledIsabel—Journalsin Alice’s careful script.
Krista had assumed the diary they’d found was it. She’d been wrong.
“This one’s from when she was our age,” Robyn said, flipping open a worn leather book. “And this one’s…wow. She wrote well into her seventies.”
Their mother sat on an old trunk nearby, hands wrapped around a mug of tea Alice had insisted she take upstairs. She’d been quiet most of the afternoon, like someone who was trying very hard to tread carefully.
“I still can’t believe Mom kept all of these,” she murmured. “She always said Grandma was ‘private.’”
Krista lifted the top diary from the new box and opened to a page where the ink had faded to a soft brown, the handwriting a little shakier than before. These weren’t the breathless entries from the cave days. These were years later.
A folded letter slipped free and fluttered into her lap.
“What’s that?” Robyn asked.
Krista unfolded it carefully. The paper crackled, edges worn thin. The writing wasn’t Isabel’s.
“Jonah,” she breathed.
Her chest tightened as she read silently, lips moving with the words. He’d written from Europe, the letter dated months after Isabel had returned home. He wished she had chosen him, he said, but he understood why she couldn’t leave her family. He hoped the month they’d stolen together would be something she carried like a secret lantern when life got dark.
He promised he’d come back for her if he could.
He never did. A newspaper clipping listing his obituary from the war followed.
Krista swallowed hard and passed the clipping to Robyn, then went back to the diary entry it had been tucked inside of.
The next entry was from months later. Krista smoothed the page and read on.
“She went back to the cave,” Krista said, voice hushed. “She sat where they used to sleep, where they talked about all the dreams they’d never get to see. There were bees hovering around the Moonlight Kiss flowers growing nearby.”
“Must be where she fell in love with beekeeping…” Robyn said, mostly to herself.
“It must, because she told them Jonah died. She says…the bees are the only ones who know the full weight of her grief.”
“Oh,” Robyn whispered, pressing a hand to her heart. “Wow.”
Krista blinked away the burn in her eyes and read the next lines.
“She says she visits the cave every month,” Krista translated. “The little piece of earth that hid them. Sometimes she sees a black bear between the trees. It looks at her with dark, stubborn eyes, and she swears she recognizes him. She wonders if the lake decided to keep a piece of him for her.”
Robyn’s mouth fell open. “Bear Lake,” she said. “The legend.”
