Secrets Kept - Part 1
Josie is thirty-five, laying awake in bed at night wondering if the dregs of the life she lost the day her Dad never came home is enough to call it living.
She didn’t know what it was about this book, but it was as if, as she was leaving, it somehow glowed into her. Like sun on her face but deeper, through her veins, her bones. Like her knowing of its sheer existence left a mark on her she couldn’t wash out of her mind.
Insane, this was all insane.
This had been a week ago, a book she saw a week ago in a bookstore coffe shop she happened to grab a quick coffee in as she was already late to her new job. She wouldn’t show up uncaffeinated too. They could handle late Josie, but Josie without coffee, not a chance in hell.
She just couldn’t catch a break lately and it was really starting to weigh on her. New job, new(ish) city, at least Hanson, her boyfriend, wasn’t new but his recent absent behavior was. Then there was Rach, thank god for her best friend, a relationship like a well worn sweatshirt that is your go to on rainy days and every other cozy day in between. But then there was her mother, she hadn’t talked to her mom in months, and somehow the guilt of that didn’t outweigh the feigned importance of countless items on her to-do list that seemed more pressing than giving her mom a phone call.
Ever since that day, that week, that month, things have never been the same. Even when Josie tried to talk to her about it in the weeks after, it always felt like her mom knew more than she had the strength to say. Six years later, Josie is turning thirty-five and some days it just feels like the steadfast support of a mom when it all feels like it’s going to shit would be nice. But somehow she knows that’s not the person she is anymore, like that day took both her parents.
And now there is this fucking book. Somehow she could not get this book out of her head. Even though she only saw it for a maximum of a minute total as she waited for her americano that day. She was even having dreams about it for god sake.