Page 123 of True Blue

My mother always told me that I have good instincts. It’s what made me say yes to this surfer buffoon when he asked me out, right after wiping out.

It’s what made me keep silent about the money, because while it solves many problems, it also creates many more.

And when I saw you, I just knew you were meant to be my granddaughter—just as much as Danielle and Stephanie are.

Then Teddy looked at you like a damn cartoon wolf with his eyes popping out of his head, and, well, that was that.

You were meant to be his.

I hope you guys take the money I’m leaving you and build something beautiful with it. Maybe that dream house in Cape May. Put my furniture to good use!

I hope you kick cancer’s ass at Bluewater.

I hope you change the world, because if anyone can do it, it’s you.

I also hope you remember that changing the world does not mean letting the world take everything from you, including Teddy.

I love that boy more than words can say, but Dawn has her hooks in him deeper than I think he even knows. But I know you see it. I know you’ve seen it for a while.

I don’t say this to put it on your shoulders, but when you are both in New Jersey, I think some things are going to change.

Help him set boundaries with Dawn. Encourage him to untangle his mother in his head. Be patient with him as he tries.

I have faith in him; he has his grandfather in him after all.

But if he doesn’t, and if he refuses, and he lets that woman decide his life.

Then you choose yourself.

Do you understand?

You choose yourself.

That’s what life is, in the end. Choices.

Sometimes we make the wrong ones. Lord knows I made plenty. But the good ones—the really brave ones—are the ones we make again and again. Even when they cost us something. Even when it’s terrifying.

Love is a choice. Staying is a choice, but so is leaving.

You make the best choice for you.

You deserve that.

Now, I suppose it’s time for me to say goodbye. I’m knocking on heaven’s door. I’ve gone to the great gig in the sky. I’ve taken the stairway to heaven. I’m talking to the spirit in the sky.

Or whatever those hunks were singing back in the seventies, which was the greatest era of music.

I’m dead, kid. Let me have the last word.

I love you, Indie girl.

Ellie

I read it ten times before I let the tears fall, grief washing over me like I’d ripped open a scab to let it bleed. It felt good to cry, and it felt like closure. I hadn’t asked about a will because I wasn’t part of the family—that much was clear—and I didn’t want to make anyone else feel like this. Picking at a wound.

But Dawn must have known something, and I’d bet the entirety of the money Ellie gave me that she didn’t get anything. That’s why she kept the will to herself.

Just when I think that woman can’t reach new depths.