Photos. TV. iBooks. Kindle.
App Store. iTunes Store. Music. Shazam.
Though I’ve had the phone in my possession for almost a year, only now do I realize there is a smudge on the top corner of the screen, so faint it’s only visible because of the lit-up screen now shining through it. Brownish-red and slightly smeared, it’s all that remains of a bloody fingerprint, and my breath catches as I stare at it.
Slowly, so slowly, I run my finger over it, wondering when and how it got there, blinking at the screen in surprise as my unintentional keystroke opens Jem’s final text message.
The top of the screen reads “Brynn,” which means he was writing to me.
An unsent message reads simply, katahd
Gasping with the sudden, overwhelming realization that Jem had spent his last moment on earth trying to write me a message, the screen blurs as my eyes fill with more burning, useless, punishing tears. To anyone else, katahd might look like gibberish, but I’ve seen the full word too many times not to recognize it.
Katahdin.
Mount Katahdin.
The highest peak in Maine.
The place where Jem said his soul had lived until he’d given it to me.
Pressing his phone to my heart, I curl into a ball on my bed and weep.
***
“What do you mean you’re going to Maine? Brynn, if you need to get away, please come to Scottsdale. You can stay as long as you like.”
“Mom, please . . .”
“This doesn’t make any sense, sweetheart,” she says, her voice wavering between concerned and impatient. I picture her at my parents’ lavish mansion, sitting on a lounger beside the pool in a floppy hat, her youthful face marked with consternation. “We know how much you loved Jem, but it’s been two years—”
“Stop,” I demand softly.
Of all the things people say to you after you lose someone you loved, being told that you should “get over it” is not only unhelpful, it’s hurtful and infuriating.
She sighs, but her voice remains gentle. “Brynn, sweetheart, please. Come to Scottsdale for a week.”
How can I help her understand what finding Jem’s final message means to me?
After these painful, wrenching twenty-four months of grieving him, in the past two days I’ve felt something new galvanizing within me—a plan, a purpose, a reason to get up and actually leave my apartment. In a way I never saw coming, Jem is showing me, from the grave, how to say goodbye—he’s giving me a chance to bury him and move on—but I have to battle my comfortable inertia and start moving to make it happen.
“Mom, he was writing to me. His last thoughts were of me . . . and Katahdin. I know that because he was texting me. He was trying to type the name of the mountain in the last seconds of his life. Don’t you see? I have to go. I have to go there for him.”
“A few hiking trips with Jem several years ago doesn’t prepare you to walk up a mountain clear across the country!” she cries, all pretense of calm disappearing as her voice pitches to a level of near panic. “There are bears, Brynn! It’s the woods. I doubt you’ll have a cell signal. It’s so far away! If something happened to you, Daddy and I couldn’t get there for days. I am your mother, and I love you, and I am begging you to rethink this plan.”
“It’s already done, Mom,” I say. “Jem’s sister is picking me up at the airport on Sunday evening. I’m staying with her. She knows the mountain like the back of her hand.”
I hadn’t spoken to Hope in over a year when I called her last night, and I worried about opening up deep wounds when I dialed her number, but she was as warm as she’d been the two times she’d visited me and Jem in San Francisco.
“Brynn! How are you?”
“I’m okay, Hope. How are you?”
“I’m okay too. Good days and bad,” she admitted. “You?”
“Same.” I paused, breathing through my deep desire to weep. “I miss him.”
“Me too. Every day.”
“I, um . . . ” I cleared my throat. “I found something. In Jem’s things.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I sent almost everything to you and your parents after it happened . . . but one thing I kept was his cell phone. By the time the police returned it, almost a year had passed. I put it in a box and kept it. I don’t know why I never turned it on, but two nights ago, I did.”
“My God,” she said. “What did you find?”
“Not much. But I think . . . I think he was trying to message me as he died.” I bit my lip, willing my voice to stay even. “There was a fragment of a message. K-A-T-A-H-D—”
“Katahdin!” she cried.
“Exactly,” I said, that feeling—that get-up-and-start-moving feeling—making my stomach flutter.
“He was writing to you?”
“Yes.”
“You think . . . you think he wanted you to go there?”
“I do.”
“Just to see it?”
“I don’t know for sure,” I said. “I just know I need to go.”
“Oh. So you’re coming East?”
Her voice, which had been pretty warm until then, had cooled a touch, and I wondered, for a split second, if I was welcome.
Though Jem’s parents had hosted a small memorial service for their son, I hadn’t flown out to Maine to attend. At the time, I’d been staying with my parents in Scottsdale, taking significant doses of Valium just to get through the day. But in the two years since the service, not attending had been one of my fiercest regrets, and I’ve always wondered if I inadvertently offended his parents and sister by not being there.
“Mm-hm. On Sunday.”
Hope was silent for a moment before saying, “You’re welcome to stay here. Do you need a ride from the airport?”
My shoulders relaxed. “That would be really great. I get in at 6:20 in the evening.”
“Writing it down so I don’t forget.” Hope paused, but her voice grew cautious when she spoke again. “No offense, Brynn, but Katahdin isn’t for beginners.”
“Which is why . . .” I bit my bottom lip, then plunged ahead. “I’m hoping you’ll go with me?”
“I wish I could,” she said, “but I leave for Boston on Monday morning. I’ll be gone for a week teaching at BU. How long are you staying?”
“Only three days,” I said, wondering if I should have booked an open return, but I didn’t want to lose clients like Stu’s Pools who’d be expecting their finished work soon after I returned from Maine.
“You know what?” said Hope. “You’ll be fine. I’ll map it out for you. Saddle Trail to Baxter Peak. Sign in at the ranger station first. Take your time. There’ll be tons of AT hikers—”
“AT?”
“Appalachian Trail. I mean, if you need help, someone will be around to give you a hand. I’ll make sure you’re outfitted too, okay? I’ll lend you some of my stuff and get whatever else I think you’ll need so you’re all set.”
I’d really wished for Hope’s company, but even alone, I knew there was no turning back. I needed to do this. For Jem. And for me.
Sighing, I push my conversation with Hope from my mind and segue back to the conversation with my mother in which I’d just implied that Hope would be hiking with me.
“Stop worrying, Mom. This is a good thing. I promise. It’s going to be okay.”
“I don’t like it, Brynn. You were medicated for months. Your father and I—”
“Mom, I need your support right now. For the first time since Jem died, I feel . . . I don’t know . . . kind of excited about something. I feel . . . like I have some direction. A purpose. I promise I’ll be careful, but I have to do this. I need to.”
My mother’s silent for a while before asking, “Do you need spending money?”
“I’m thirty years old and you still treat me like I’m eleven,” I say, smiling down at Milo, who’s weaving in and out of my legs.
“I love you,” she says. “You’ll always be eleven to me.
”
“I love you too.”
We talk about my dad’s latest golf tournament win, and she updates me on my cousin Bel’s new boyfriend. We end our conversation laughing, which hasn’t happened in a long, long time. And as I place the handset back in the cradle and head to my room to start packing, I feel grateful.
I feel ready.
PURCHASE UNLOVED, a love story NOW
ALSO AVAILABLE
from Katy Regnery
a m o d e r n f a i r y t a l e
(A collection)
The Vixen and the Vet
Never Let You Go
Ginger’s Heart
Dark Sexy Knight
Don’t Speak
Shear Heaven
THE BLUEBERRY LANE SERIES
THE ENGLISH BROTHERS
(Blueberry Lane Books #1–7)
Breaking Up with Barrett
Falling for Fitz
Anyone but Alex
Seduced by Stratton
Wild about Weston
Kiss Me Kate
Marrying Mr. English
THE WINSLOW BROTHERS
(Blueberry Lane Books #8–11)
Bidding on Brooks
Proposing to Preston
Crazy about Cameron
Campaigning for Christopher
THE ROUSSEAUS
(Blueberry Lane Books #12–14)
Jonquils for Jax
Marry Me Mad
J.C. and the Bijoux Jolis
THE STORY SISTERS
(Blueberry Lane Books #15–17)
The Bohemian and the Businessman
The Director and Don Juan
Countdown to Midnight
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Fighting Irish
Smiling Irish
Loving Irish
Catching Irish
THE ARRANGED DUO
Arrange Me
Arrange Us
ODDS ARE GOOD SERIES
Single in Sitka
Nome-o Seeks Juliet
My Valdez Valentine
Kodiak Lumberjack
STAND-ALONE BOOKS:
After We Break, a love story
(a stand-alone second-chance romance)
Braveheart, a love story
(a stand-alone dark romance)
Frosted
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Unloved, a love story
(a stand-alone suspenseful romance)
Under the sweet-romance pen name
Katy Paige
THE LINDSTROMS
Proxy Bride
Missy’s Wish
Sweet Hearts
Choose Me
Virtually Mine
Unforgettable You
Under the paranormal pen name
K. P. Kelley
It’s You, Book 1
It’s You, Book 2
Under the YA pen name
Callie Henry
A Date for Hannah
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Katy Regnery started her writing career by enrolling in a short story class in January 2012. One year later, she signed her first contract, and Katy’s first novel was published in September 2013.
More than forty-five books and three RITA® nominations later, Katy claims authorship of the multititled Blueberry Lane series, the A Modern Fairytale collection, the Summerhaven series, the Arranged duo, and several other stand-alone romances, including the critically acclaimed mainstream fiction novel Unloved, a love story.
Katy’s books are available in English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, and Turkish.
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