Page 150 of The Grand Ruin: Lance & Scarlet-Part One

You’re going to save the people around you, and then you’ll save yourself too.

I just know it.

And in the moments you feel like you can’t save them, or you feel like you’ve failed, know that you’ve done it once already, and you can do it again. Because even as I sit here feeling like I’ve failed my family by getting sick, having to write these silly letters, I only have to snap my gaze an inch to the left, and I smile.

And that’s because of you.

My heart is yours,

Mum.

I’d call it my favourite of the entries, but it reduces me to tears each and every time I read it. They got longer as they went on, this being one of the first she wrote. It was as if she was afraid of what to say at first, as if maybe she didn’t know what to say at times. Eventually, I became a friend to her, a sounding board for ideas that went unanswered and a reader of some of her most treasured stories.

I skip ahead to her last entry.

Scarlet,

This book has plenty of empty pages left, but I’m scared I’m not going to be able to fill them. Your dad, as I thought, is in complete denial, trying to carry on as if everything is normal when in reality, I can’t close my eyes at night without the terror of never waking up again consuming me. But it’s terror for them: your dad and Mason, not me or you.

I feel ready. Not in the way that I can leave and be okay with it, but in the way that my body feels tired and it needs the peace that leaving this world promises.

And as for you, Scarlet… (I’m smiling wide just at the thought). I’ve held you in my arms every day for the last twelve months, and I don’t know how you do it, but out of everyone I have to say goodbye to, our goodbye doesn’t scare me. You have here everything I needed you to know about life, and yet you’re going to be whoever you want to be regardless of it. You’re fierce. Wild and free. Scarlet, I’m not afraid because this won’t impact you like it’ll impact them, and when it does impact them, I know with the love and guidance you have around you, you’ll make me the proudest mother in the world.

Your Auntie Frey has been around a lot more recently, actually, and I know that she knows. She’s going to watch you grow for me. She’ll be the mum you deserve, and I can promise you she’ll never steer you wrong. Listen to her, Scarlet, she’s wiser than I’ve ever been, and as you now know, she’s saved my ass on more than one occasion.

The doctors are on their way out to the estate as I write this, and I’m supposed to be resting before they arrive. They’ll poke me and prod me and tell me the same thing I was told only days ago. I’d rather make the most of these quiet moments instead. Whilst the fretting stops, and I can be just me. It gives me a chance to talk to you some more.

I remember when I used to feel guilty for not knowing what to say to you. Turns out I had a lifetime of stories I could give you—I hope you’ve enjoyed them. I hope you can find things in them that bring you the parts of me you need. A part of me hopes you’ll never need them, but I don’t believe someone can be as special as you are, Scarlet, and not live through some adversity.

You’ve seen all of my struggles through these pages, maybe lived through the pain they’ve brought me at times, and if that’s a burden, I’m sorry. I never planned on giving you so much, but there isn’t a page of this book I’d take back. I’m glad you know. I feel like you do know now. Me.

Today, you’re just my sweet baby. There’s a whole life for you waiting to be lived, and I won’t ever know those days.

But don’t you dare for a minute think that I’m sad, Scarlet Lowell. The thought of the life you and your brother will live is the only excitement I can feel or find anymore. Nothing else comes close.

Live that life.

And, my baby girl, whoever you are when you read this, know that you saved me a thousand times over.

If I lived another day, it was because of you.

My heart is yours,

Mum

Based on the dates, my mother lived for another three days after she wrote that last letter. The rest of the diary is blank pages, and on the days following my dad’s death, his funeral and every day since, I know I could have filled them three times over.

For the first time in my life, I feel a little something more than I knew was possible for my mum. The pictures that have always been around our home, along with her words, make her someone I feel like I know. But it’s even more personal than that. She gave me the most vulnerable side of herself. When she couldn’t speak to Dad because he’d worry or felt like a burden putting it on Freya, she came to me. I wish I had them sooner, but maybe my dad was saving them. I’ve never lived through pain or suffering like what my mum described until this last year, and it’s not like the diaries were hidden from me. My dad knew I’d find them eventually.

Mason has the ones dedicated to him now, but even in her letters to me, she told me he wouldn’t read them.

How did she know?

I was a baby.

Mason was four years old. And yet she saw right through him.

And she’s right. He probably won’t read them.

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