Bloom

Lay Me Down

Here's what I know:

1. When H wrote one and only on his diary, he is referring to L, or maybe himself in respects to L. Either way, L and H are each other's one and only.

2. H writes please over and over again because he wants L to stay with him, he wants L to always be around, but she can't. Why? I'm not sure yet. Maybe she was supposed to marry someone else, maybe he was? I don't know, but they weren't supposed to be together. I can hear it in the desperation of his writing.

3. Darcy, my Grammy, was a friend of L's.

That's it. That's all I know. Dammit.

Grammy's calling, I can hear Reign yelling for me to come get the phone, she wants to speak with me. Lovely, I know where this is headed, and it's going to end up in me lying to her.

"Hello, lovey," her bright, chirpy voice is loud over the speaker in my ear.

"Hi, Grammy, how's the trip?" I take the phone with me to my room and shut the door. Reign is a snoop and she's always trying to listen in on my calls. With the diary, she's sure to want to know all about this conversation.

"Oh, it's marvelous, you would love it here," she says.

"I've always wanted to visit Italy," I say.

"You know who loved Italy?" she says dreamily. I wondered where this was going, and I had a gut feeling I knew. I wish she would just say my grandfather and go on some story about him, but she never does.

"Who?"

"H," she says. There it is.

"I see," I sigh. Guilt wracks my body and I want to hang up or pretend I lost signal.

"Have you found him yet?" She asks. "To give him his things back?"

"Um, no, not yet," I say shakily. "I've been busy," I hate lying to her. I hate lying to anybody, I'm horrible at it.

"Busy? With what, Darcy? It's summer," she doesn't say it in a mean way, it's just a question. It's like she knows. It's like she's immune to people lying to her.

"I put the photos in albums. I tried to order them by month and year, most of them have dates on them. I thought it would be nice to do that before I find him, maybe he'd like to go through them, and it just makes it easier to..." I'm rambling, I know it am. It's all half-truths, but it's all I have, it's all I can do when I'm lying.

"Darcy," Grammy stops me.

"Yes?" My palms are sweating and I'm nervous. I don't want her to be disappointed in me for being nosy.

"I think that's lovely," she says eventually. "That's very kind of you to do for someone you don't know,"

Oh, but I feel like I know him. I feel like I dove deep into his soul. I can't stop reading his words and living his moments. It's unfair and it's not for my eyes, but I can't stop myself. "I'd like to know him, I think,"

"What do you mean?"

"Just, um, the photos, they're beautiful. I want to know the people in them and hear their stories," Instead of just reading them, I don't say.

"You should," she nods. "I should be in some of the photographs. H is the only other one left though,"

"You and H are the only ones still living?" I ask.

"Yes, sad, isn't it?" she clicks her tongue like she's remembering her old friends so fondly.

I want to ask more, I want to ask her who L is, who G is, who all of them are and why H and L couldn't be together. I want to ask why, why, why. But I can't because Grammy is telling me she has to go, a bakery that she hasn't tried is opening.