Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 106806 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 534(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106806 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 534(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
But this weekend I needed to come to L.A. to see the Diva studios and meet with “my team” (that’s still crazy to me) to flesh out my vision for this program. It’s not a live-streaming program like The Rage is, but that might be for the best. Instead of just me on the screen, I’ll get to have a whole group working out with me—which means I’ll be able to represent a half-dozen of the infinite different ways a fit body can look. That alone might excite me as much as putting heavy weights in women’s hands.
Oliver returns with a big purse I recognize from one of the hardest days of my life. The purse I filled with the contents from Charles’s chest.
“Oliver,” I whisper.
“You deserved to look through all this a long time ago,” he says, putting the bag on the couch and taking a seat on the other side of it.
I open it up and lift out the first manilla envelope, glancing at him. “I can open these?”
He nods. “I want you to.”
I carefully pull the contents from one manilla envelope and then another. Oliver helps me, grabbing a third and fourth, until they’re all empty and everything from inside sits on the couch between us.
My heart aches as I scan the contents. “This is all? This is what you needed me to steal?”
It’s not nothing, but it’s all so . . . personal. Piles and piles of photos, scrapbooks, and scrapbook pages that were clearly never finished. I flip through the photos, and the ache in my chest intensifies when I realize one stack is entirely from the short months of Oliver’s life when his father still lived with them.
The woman in the pictures is stunning, and if I knew her while she was living, I would’ve seen Oliver in her at first glance. But it’s not just her in the photos that breaks my heart. These are pictures of a family. Charles looking at Oliver’s mom like she’s the light of his life. In other pictures, he’s holding a baby Oliver, grinning at him. But the majority of the photos are of Oliver and his mother, and I imagine Charles behind the camera capturing those moments. For a short while, they were a family.
All the other stacks of pictures feature a little boy in all stages of his life, captured by someone who so obviously adored him.
Beneath the photos there’s a stack of three journals, and I immediately remember the first night I met Oliver and how he told me his mother was always journaling.
“You said your father burned these.”
He clears his throat. “Yeah. That’s what he told me. Imagine my surprise when I found them with all her other things he’d been keeping from me.”
I flip through a journal, admiring the loopy script without reading the words. The secrets in here aren’t mine to know. “Why did he have them? Shouldn’t these have been yours?”
“He said I couldn’t be trusted with them, but I think it was just another way to make me do as he demanded.”
I frown. “Alec’s mother knew this stuff was gone after Charles died.” I lift my gaze to meet Oliver’s eyes. “Why would she even care?”
He gives me a sad smile. “Cheryl was always so jealous of my mother. I think that’s why she hated me so much. But these journals and pictures tell a story much different than the meaningless affair she described to explain away my existence.” He places a big hand on the front of a leather-bound journal and strokes it with his thumb. “I think part of me wants to believe that when Charles told me he burned the journals, he wanted her to think it was true so she wouldn’t be so set on destroying them herself.” He sighs. “Or maybe I’m giving him too much credit.”
I squeeze his hand, and we spend the next hour going through pictures and scrapbook pages. He tells me about each, as well as everything he can remember about his mother. Sometimes he even talks about his father, and I’m grateful when I realize that though their relationship was strained, Oliver has some good moments to remember.
When we’re cleaning up and sliding everything back into envelopes, I pick up a stray sage-color business-size envelope with the Coast to Coast Equities and Investments watermark. “You kept this?” I ask.
“Oh. Yeah. I don’t know how that ended up with the rest. It’s just a random envelope with my info in it.” He extends his hand, palm up. “I’ll throw it out.”
I shake my head and frown at the torn edge. Hope flutters in my heart as I meet his eyes. “Your info?”
He narrows his eyes. “You’re acting weird. What is it?”
It shouldn’t matter. In fact, it doesn’t really matter to me, but I know it would mean so much to Oliver.