The cover might have been red, back when it was new. And I could only imagine how decadent that must have been, a bright red book with gold-edged pages, when your family members were humble farmers. Inside the front cover, edges tattered and the binding cracked, her name was written in beautifully flowing lines and curled letters.
Rose Margaret Buchanan - Daily Thoughts and Heart's Wishes
My own heart pinched as I ran my fingers along the words. Thoughts and heart's wishes. There was pragmatism inside that one statement, right alongside a romantic soul.
Rose had a lot of daily thoughts, some with a tinge of snark that had me smiling as I read through the first couple of pages.
She didn't like the town's preacher much, nor his wife, because she felt like his sermons included too much fire and brimstone, and not enough guidance on living day to day in God's creation. Her favorite thing was school, and when she aged out, there was a marked difference in the way she wrote.
There was nothing about seeing a man that knocked her onto her ass, and struck her with a bolt of love at first sight lightning.
She had friends, she loved her family, and she struggled with not being able to learn more than what she'd already been taught in school.
I flipped ahead, until I found an entry after she turned sixteen that had me sitting up in my seat.
I hate Joseph Montgomery more than I've hated anyone in my entire life.
He's too tall. He keeps trying to invent reasons to talk to me when I'm at the store. He always buys my favorite candy and sneaks it into the pockets of my dress when I'm not looking. Maybe I'll sew them shut when I get home just so that I won't find them and think of him. I hate the way he wants to carry my bags home for me, as though I'm incapable of carrying them on my own! I hate the way he walks slow and easy, as if he has all the time in the world to get where he's going.
Every single thing about him tries my patience, until I feel as though I'll scream just from looking at him.
Momma told me hating is a sin, but I think God will forgive me this. He probably hates Joseph too.
How very thrilling, I thought with a smile, to feel such a kinship with a girl who lived a couple hundred years earlier. But right on the tails of that smile-inducing thought, my gut sank like an anchor in clean, cold water.
Irrational, illogical hatred.
Something senseless, without any grounds in reality.
My hands shook a little when I turned the next page with utmost care. A week had passed since her last entry.
Joseph held my hand yesterday, helping me over a large puddle in the street, and the strangest thing happened. My hand felt as though it was on fire. So did my heart. He thought me strange, when I ran back home as if the devil himself were chasing me. All because he touched his fingers to mine.
I think I might be losing my head, because the first thought that came to me when he touched me was that I wondered what it felt like to be kissed by him.
I’ve never been kissed, and now, I want him to be my very first one.
Without a single thought as to why, I've begun to keep every single one of the candies he buys me, loathe to put them in my mouth, because then they'll be gone, and I'll have to wait for the next one to appear in my pocket, like a magic trick. There is a small bag tucked next to my pillow, hidden from my brothers, and I now have six peppermints inside of it.
Is this what love feels like? I don't know if I want to love him, because I did hate him with every part of my soul, but the more I think of him when I fall asleep, the more I think that I'm without a say in the matter.
"Ohhhhhhh holy shit," I whispered, scanning the next few pages with a burgeoning sense of dread.
Their first kiss.
When he told her he loved her.
When she finally said it back.
Sweet stories of courting. Of sneaking out behind the barn so they could be alone.
My eyes could hardly scan fast enough, because it was all so sweet—so terribly, heartbreakingly sweet—that I could hardly stand to read anymore for what it was doing to my heart.
Then the last page of the book, the night before they got married on her eighteenth birthday.
My last day writing as Rose Buchanan. My next book, the one with the beautiful blue cover that he ordered from New York as a wedding present because he said it matched my eyes, will say Rose Margaret Montgomery. Tomorrow I will marry my love, and nothing, nothing in my life could ever be better than this feeling. I'm so glad that I didn't hate him for very long, because I cannot wait to call him My Husband.
Carefully, and so very, very slowly, I closed the cover of the journal and clutched it to my heaving chest. I felt a tear slip down my cheek before I even realized I was crying. I set the book back into the box and sat straight, staring at the far wall of the attic while my mind scrambled around what I'd just read. My palms pressed hard against my cheeks to stem the remainder of the tears, and I took a few deep breaths before I pulled my phone out.
I hit the name on the screen and waited for a voice to pick up.
"Come on, come on, come on," I whispered after another unanswered ring.
"Hey, sweet—" my mom said.
"You said the curse wasn't real," I interrupted. My breathing picked up, and I pressed a hand to my chest. "You guys told us the family curse was crazy-ass, southern bullshit because
