[COMPLETE]
When Hanna Haddad embarks on what's supposed to be another uneventful summer as a lifeguard on Cape Cod, a trip to the past comes as an unnerving surprise. The discovery of her estranged mother's journal opens up the world of tragedy and...
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I'd first learned what a miscarriage was when I was eight. I was watching TV with my mother, and a woman on an early morning talk discussed how she'd coped with not one or two, but three different miscarriages before her identical twins had been born.
As a mere third grader, I'd somewhat understood the compounded trauma, but it was a different story to witness someone you knew, someone you loved, go through the loss of wanted life.
I'd held Stella for over an hour as she'd cried and cried, until her cries had turned into sniffles and a few sniffles into a smile. Some remarkable sense of courage had overwhelmed her the next day, and she'd told her parents everything, from the boyfriend to the pregnancy to the miscarriage. During our Facetime call yesterday, she hadn't described exactly how they'd reacted, but I knew she was still alive, at least.
But before she had hung up on me, she'd decided to drop one last minor detail.
Alex now knew.
"Hey, Hanna, you have any idea what's going on with Alex?"
Janelle caught up to me on our morning jog, long legs taking her from the end of the pack to the beginning rather easily.
At the mere mention of him, I perked up as if I'd already had my morning coffee. "With Alex? Is something wrong?"
"See, that's why I'm asking you," she chuckled. "I don't know, he was just so...spacey when he showed up to work today. And then he snapped at me when I asked what was wrong, which usually isn't like him."
"I think he received some bad news," I said, mindlessly adjusting my ponytail. "Ex-girlfriend stuff. But he'll probably tell you soon enough."
It wasn't a total lie. After all, it wasn't fair to out Stella if she hadn't yet given me her permission to tell people what had happened to her. I could never betray the years of trust we'd built, knowing how many secrets of mine she'd kept over the past eleven years.
"Oh, alright then." We continued a couple more feet before she turned her head to me again. "Is Stella okay, at least? I know Alex broke up with her pretty randomly."
"Yeah, she's fine."At least physically, according to her doctor. No emotional guarantees. "She's had some—uh—personal issues...to deal with."
"Well, send my best wishes her way, then. I know you two are close friends." I thanked the heavens that Janelle wasn't nosy, already struggling to bite my tongue. "Now, I'm dying to know, how are things with you and your absolute hunk of a partner?"
"With who?"
"Jesse." She suggestively raised her eyebrows. "I mean, come on, we all know."
"Know what?" I didn't know what I was trying to accomplish from transforming her statements into questions, but I hated these types of conversations. They reminded me of high school, where my love life had somehow always been the interest of everyone else but me—kind of like my mother and Samantha in those diary entries.
