Chapter 23
You write beautifully. I am honored to get to know this part of your soul.
—A letter from Mae Tanner to her husband, Jedidiah Tanner, passed in their own home
P erry lay on the floor of her old bedroom, wrapped in a sleeping bag, Mae’s diary tucked up against her chest.
It was so much more than old-timey porn.
Mae wrote stunning entries about how she could connect with Jedidiah’s body, but how his heart seemed closed off. She begged him for more every night with her kiss.
They were married already, bound together, and she was living in the shadow of another woman. Perry’s heart ached for her.
Perry was angry she’d left the letters on the counter, because she knew they were important. Because Mae started to reference them in her diary.
He shares his heart best in writing.
Perry could relate.
She could also relate to the push and pull, the way Mae’s husband would give and then take back.
The diary ended abruptly, with no resolution, and Perry screamed into the empty void of the house.
How could it end like that? With her not knowing?
How could Perry find the map to her own happy ending, if she couldn’t even find it in the lives of her ancestors?
She lowered her head to her pillow and cried for a lonely woman who had slept in this house pining for a man she feared could never love her back.
As she did the same thing a hundred and twenty-five years later.