Welcome to Penny’s Diary, a contemporary urban-fantasy serial. Read new diary entries every Thursday. Supporting readers can also access a weekly Writer’s Commentary, along with immersive audio and eBook editions, after each entry.
New to Penny’s story? Begin at the very first entry by clicking the button below and step into the moments where everything started to change.
Ellie woke me at a time that should only exist for airport departures and medical emergencies.
She was standing beside the bed with two iced drinks, a paper bag from Cascades, and the kind of expression people get when they have already made several decisions on your behalf and are feeling very pleased about it.
“Up,” she said. “We’re getting the bus to Halifax.”
Apparently this was not a kidnapping because she had brought croissants.
The plan was clothes shopping at the mall before Three Falls, with a strict return bus because we still had to get changed, pack everything, and reach the trailhead for one-thirty.
I pointed out that I already owned clothes.
Ellie explained, with unnecessary patience, that I did not own clothes suitable for a pool party in a forest where everyone would be taking photographs.
Which was fair.
I had no idea what the etiquette was for a “pool party” where the pool was technically a waterfall-fed body of water, the changing room was probably a tree, and leaving required a fifteen-minute hike back to the cars.
So I made the strategic decision to let Ellie choose everything.
This was partly because she understood clothes.
It was also because the second I told her she was in charge, something in her face lit up.
Ellie loved clothes before Candy decided appearances were weapons. I wanted to give that back to her for a morning.
On the bus, Ellie mentioned she had seen Felicia chatting with Charlotte at Cascades when she picked up breakfast. Felicia and her dad had come back early from their mini-vacation because he had important business in town.
Ellie wondered whether “important business” meant making sure Candy’s party did not end with an emergency-services press conference.
Apparently Charlotte had also made another comment about redheads sticking together, like it was their secret code or something.
I said that sounded threatening.
Ellie said it was cute.
We agreed to remain divided on the issue.
The mall itself happened quickly—mostly because Ellie approached it like a military operation with better lighting and a bus timetable.
She chose a swimsuit I could actually move in, shorts that would survive rocks and damp grass, a loose shirt I could pull on without performing public gymnastics, and shoes suitable for the trail instead of looking pretty beside it.
She also made me try on approximately nine things I did not buy, because apparently efficiency has limits.
I let her choose the final outfit.
Not because I could not have picked something myself.
Because she was happy.
She kept the whole thing in my usual purple orbit too—because she knows me far too well.
We picked up a few things for Willowfen while we were there too, because apparently preparing for one trip by shopping for another is what efficiency looks like in Ellie’s world.
We made the return bus with several minutes to spare, which Ellie treated as proof that the operation had been flawlessly planned rather than proof that she had rushed me through the last shop at terrifying speed.
By the time the bus pulled out of Halifax, she had another iced drink in one hand, shopping bags at her feet, and more color in her face than she had when she woke me.
For a few hours, Three Falls had stopped being Candy’s party.
It had become Ellie’s excuse to go shopping.
My phone buzzed while Ellie was trying to decide whether one spare shirt counted as prepared or optimistic.
Teddy: Phones charged. Power bank packed. No splitting up. No private Candy conversations. Leave if anything feels wrong.
Then, one minute later:
Teddy: And before you ask, “Candy existing” does count as something feeling wrong, but apparently that is not specific enough for the emergency plan.
That was Teddy being reassuring.
He sounded tired even through text—which should not be possible but absolutely was. He confirmed he would watch for social-media posts and save screenshots if anything started moving online.
Chen Print had finally taken on the person from the trial shift for three afternoons a week and Saturdays, but Teddy was still covering part of today.
I gave him one last chance to come with us anyway.
His answer contained language this diary has chosen not to preserve.
The apartment had become two separate packing disasters happening at once.
Three Falls supplies covered one side of the bed: towels, sunscreen, dry clothes, water, snacks, the power bank, Polaroid camera, spare film, and my diary hidden in the secret compartment of my backpack.
Willowfen had taken over the other side with train tickets, hotel confirmation, chargers, toiletries, and the kind of practical lists that make Teddy feel emotionally fulfilled.
Sean’s Seven of Hearts was tucked safely inside my diary with the help paper.
Everything else stayed behind.
Normally, Saturday meant a diary deep dive and discovering what new way Clearwater had found to ruin my childhood.
Not today.
Part of me hated postponing it.
A much larger and more sensible part pointed out that deliberately triggering memory blasts before hiking through Hellgate Forest, swimming in waterfall pools, and spending several hours around Candy Steele was not research.
It was a very complicated suicide note.
We were choosing when to face it, which felt suspiciously like the kind of thing healthy people probably did all the time without needing three notebooks and a bulletin board named Bobby.
For once, postponing the memory blasts was not cowardice.
It was the first intelligent decision any of us had made involving Clearwater and outdoor swimming.
Candy had a clipboard.
Of course she had a clipboard.
Our rideshare driver had spent most of the journey trying to work out why two girls dressed for a pool party needed dropping beside a trail map in the middle of Hellgate Forest.
I did not have an answer that would have improved his afternoon.
By the time me and Ellie reached the gravel trailhead at one-thirty, Candy had turned the place into something between a school trip, a military checkpoint, and a lifestyle-brand launch.
Cars lined the pull-in. Bags were being redistributed. Someone had brought enough bottled water to survive a siege. Candy stood beside the trail map checking names and smiling like she had personally invented responsible fun.
I checked the cars and faces around her.
Rich “The Dick” Cavanagh was nowhere among them. Breaking up with him had at least kept him from Candy’s guest list. That did not make the party safe, but it removed one very specific kind of danger.
“Your dad was very clear about the safety rules,” Candy told Ellie, loudly enough for the parents still hovering near their cars.
Technically true.
Mayor Horton had provided conditions, not approval, and definitely not a ceremonial blessing over Candy Steele’s Forest Pool Extravaganza.
Details.
Ellie’s name had apparently become an emergency spell.
Candy wanted her checking everyone’s water, repeating the upper-pool warning, and helping Sally with the food bags.
The first request almost worked. Ellie started to turn automatically, then reached for my hand instead.
“I’m staying with Penny. But I can remind everyone from here.”
Candy’s smile stayed exactly where it was.
Her eyes did not.
Steve stood beside her in red board shorts and a white T-shirt, carrying two first-aid kits and looking like someone had cast him as Responsible Teenager Number One—without asking whether he wanted the part.
Candy made sure everyone knew he was a trained lifeguard, had brought his truck, and could provide early rides.
Apparently Steve Dillon’s presence meant waterfalls had signed a safety agreement.
We started down Mystic Falls Path in something Candy kept pretending was a loose group.
She moved people forward for photographs, sent others back where the trail narrowed, and tried to place Ellie in the middle so everyone could hear the rules. Then she suggested I walk ahead with Kaelyn and Sally because they were already taking pictures.
We passed the spot where me and Ellie had found the glowing tree crack.
I looked.
Nothing mysterious there.
Just a tree.
I did not investigate.
Personal growth.
Candy was still trying to rearrange us.
She knew what she was doing.
So did we.
“We’re good here,” Ellie said.
That became our strategy.
No argument. No announcement. Just refusing to stand where Candy placed us.
The path was pretty in the highly suspicious way Hellgate Forest is always pretty. Sun through the leaves. Water getting louder ahead. Mossy rocks waiting to murder anyone who trusted them.
The lower pool opened beneath the trees with towels spreading across the grass, bags stacked near the rocks, and photographs happening before anyone had properly arrived.
Candy immediately divided everything into categories.
Food over there.
Dry clothes beneath the trees.
Swimming near Steve.
Pictures by the wide rocks because the light was better.
Ellie was responsibility.
Steve was safety.
Candy was the reason all of it looked organized instead of slightly unhinged.
Then Marilyn came down the trail alone, carrying one bag and dressed like Marilyn Monroe had received an invitation to a forest pool party.
She wore the expression of someone who had decided being stared at was everyone else’s problem.
The conversation around the pool changed for half a second.
Candy greeted her too brightly and indicated a space beside the towels, like Marilyn had been assigned a marked square on the ground.
Marilyn looked at it.
Then chose somewhere else.
Not dramatically. Not enough for Candy to call rude.
Just enough.
That was when I understood what Candy had built.
Not a party.
A picture.
And every person in it already had a place.
The first hour went almost exactly the way Candy wanted.
People swam.
People ate.
Music played from somebody’s speaker at a volume apparently designed to frighten local wildlife.
Photographs happened constantly.
Not casual photographs either. Candy kept fixing them. Moving someone half a step. Calling people back because the light was better. Suggesting a second version where everyone looked more relaxed, which is difficult once someone has instructed you to look relaxed.
I had brought my Polaroid camera and had already taken a few pictures of the waterfall, the pool, Ellie, and one suspiciously photogenic pile of towels.
Candy noticed it almost immediately.
She looked at it with the bemused expression of someone encountering an object that could not automatically upload itself.
“Does that still work?”
“It takes photographs,” I said. “So far, yes.”
She turned toward Steve.
“Take one of us.”
This was apparently not a request.
Steve moved beside her while Candy chose a section of the pool with the waterfall behind them.
I took the photograph.
Candy watched it develop, frowned at the light, and asked for another.
The second one had caught Steve blinking.
The third one met the required standards for preserving their relationship in physical form.
Candy kept that one and immediately returned to managing the rest of us.
Me and Ellie stayed together.
That was the important part.
We swam near the lower edge where the water was calmer, ate food that had spent slightly too long near the sun, and ignored three separate attempts to place Ellie somewhere more useful. Every time Candy called her name, Ellie answered without moving away from me.
It was beautiful.
Then, with a delicate splash, Marilyn rose from the water like a vintage Hollywood icon.
She was supposed to look awkward.
I knew that because Candy kept creating opportunities for her to.
Marilyn had warned me not to come and then arrived anyway, which told me more about how much choice she had than anything Candy could have said.
Except she had arrived in full pageant mode, which made awkward difficult.
Her swimsuit was white and vintage-inspired, the kind of old-Hollywood look that made arriving quietly unlikely.
After Maple Crown—wearing it should probably have felt impossible.
The head judge had died following the crash, after trying to run Marilyn down and missing her when we pulled her clear. She had been exposed in front of the town, stripped of the crown, and left with everyone discussing whether she had ever deserved it in the first place.
Candy clearly expected her to arrive smaller because of that.
Marilyn had chosen cinematic instead.
Candy introduced her too loudly to people who already knew who she was. Asked about Maple Crown in the careful voice people use when pretending gossip is concern. Suggested Marilyn help with the photographs because she was “the expert.”
Marilyn smiled through all of it.
Then she stopped behaving like someone awaiting permission.
She made Kaelyn laugh so hard she nearly dropped her drink. Helped Sally repair a broken sandal strap with a hair tie. Told a story about a Maple Crown sponsor event involving a collapsing floral arch and one extremely committed goose.
I do not know whether the goose was real.
It did not matter.
People started gathering around her because she was funny, not because they wanted to watch her fail.
Candy noticed.
Of course she noticed.
She was standing beside Steve when Marilyn came back from the water, her hair wet and laughing at something Sally had said.
Steve looked over.
That was all.
Except his smile arrived before he remembered he was not supposed to be smiling at her.
Marilyn saw it.
Her expression changed too. Only for a second. Something softer, then gone.
Candy stepped closer to Steve.
Nobody said anything.
The important part was the timing.
Later, Candy decided we needed one final group photograph before everyone started packing.
Most of the party had already left by then, leaving only the people she seemed most interested in arranging.
She chose the wide rocks beside the lower pool because the waterfall would be behind us and the light was still good. Then she began arranging people.
Candy and Steve in the middle.
Ellie beside Candy.
Marilyn near the edge.
Me farther back, where I would still be technically included but could easily be cropped out by anyone feeling creative later.
It was subtle.
Which is Candy’s favorite kind of cruel.
I looked at Ellie.
Candy had placed her exactly where she wanted her: close enough to look claimed, useful, and separate from me.
So I moved before Candy could finish arranging everyone.
“Marilyn, middle.”
Marilyn looked at me.
So did Candy.
I kept my voice light and pointed toward the center.
“The white will look better against the water.”
Then I turned to Steve.
“You’re taller. Behind her.”
It happened quickly enough that people obeyed before they had time to wonder whether I was allowed to be giving instructions.
Marilyn stepped into the center.
Steve moved behind and slightly to one side of her.
I caught Ellie’s hand and pulled her back beside me.
“Candy, that side,” I said. “The light’s better.”
Candy had already spent the afternoon teaching everyone to follow photography directions without questioning them.
For one fatal second, that included mine.
People shifted.
Someone raised a phone.
Someone else started a timer.
By the time Candy understood the picture had changed—stopping it would have meant admitting that the arrangement mattered.
So she smiled.
The camera timer flashed.
At the last second, Marilyn said something I could not hear.
Steve laughed.
The photograph caught that.
It caught Marilyn smiling properly, not pageant-smiling. It caught Steve looking at her instead of Candy. It caught Ellie calm beside me, our shoulders touching. It caught me facing forward instead of hovering at the edge like a warning label.
Candy looked perfect.
She also looked like she had been placed in somebody else’s picture.
The photograph was taken on at least four phones and two digital cameras.
By the time we had gathered our bags and started back along Mystic Falls Path, it was already spreading online.
I saw it over someone’s shoulder first.
Then it appeared in another post.
Then somebody added three red heart emojis beneath Marilyn’s name.
Candy was a few steps ahead of us when her phone buzzed.
She stopped.
Looked down.
Then looked back at me.
She did not say anything.
She did not need to.
The photograph was already out there.
Candy still had her version of the party.
She just did not have the only one.
I checked my phone before I was properly awake.
Obviously, I was not checking for the photograph.
I was checking the weather.
The weather had apparently developed several group chats overnight.
Candy’s official recap was already up. Eight polished pictures. Everyone smiling. Water sparkling. Steve looking responsible. Ellie helping with something. Candy placed neatly in the center of almost every frame, like the afternoon had grown around her.
Marilyn’s photograph was not there.
That was fact one.
Fact two was that everyone else seemed to have it.
Then I saw fact three.
Sally had posted it.
Candy had liked it.
No comment. No heart emoji. No fake compliment.
Just the like.
Which should have felt smaller than silence—
It did not.
Teddy had already sent screenshots of the first posts, complete with times and names, because sleep is apparently optional when your best friend believes social media may become evidence.
Teddy: Saved the originals. Don’t engage. Go on vacation.
Good advice, annoyingly.
Ellie held up her phone while I took a Polaroid of the group picture.
Teddy had the digital version covered.
I wanted a physical copy that had a chance of surviving Clearwater. Polaroids had already been harder to erase than almost everything else in our lives.
Backup evidence.
Romantic, really.
Candy had wanted control more than exposure. We had interrupted one part of that.
Now she knew we knew.
Useful.
Terrible, but useful.
There was one small bright spot.
Candy was leaving the following Sunday for a two-week skiing vacation, which meant she would miss the Meridian Cinema Restaurant opening on August 23.
That gave us an opening night without Candy arranging the guest list, correcting the photographs—or standing near Steve like possession could be achieved through shoulder placement.
It did not make us safe.
It just meant she would be dangerous from farther away.
In the meantime, Willowfen was waiting for us.
The train tickets were printed as backups to the digital ones. The booking at the Bellweather Hotel was confirmed. Ellie had packed enough clothes for several possible climates and one minor royal visit.
Candy already had half the town arranged inside her version of yesterday.
She was not getting any luggage space too.
This is the last thing I am writing before Willowfen.
Not because nothing important is going to happen.
Hopefully the opposite.
The apartment is currently in that final stage of packing where everything is technically ready except for the twelve things Ellie keeps remembering.
Gramps has checked that we have everything twice without making it feel like he has checked that we have everything twice.
Mom has been given the approved version: we are going away for a few days, the Bellweather Hotel is lovely, Gramps knows the owner, and we will call when we arrive.
All true.
Just not very complete.
Ellie has checked in with her dad and Felicia. Teddy is on his way to drive us to West Shore Station and has already sent reminders about train tickets, arrival texts, emergency numbers, weather, charging cables, and not accidentally beginning an investigation while on vacation.
He knows me too well.
The Polaroid camera is in my backpack—
This diary is not.
Bobby has been turned into the Bizarre News Bulletin board, which currently means covering several deeply alarming sections with school-project material and pretending it is about strange urban myths instead of evidence that our lives keep trying to become one.
Everything else we cannot leave in sight has gone into the window-seat cache in the purple room.
Teddy has the Truthweaver laptop.
This diary is going behind the AC vent in my old bedroom.
The same place I hid it before Clearwater.
I do not enjoy that comparison.
The last time I deliberately left this diary behind, I was walking into a medical center that erased parts of me and expected the rest to behave.
This time, I am going to a hotel with Ellie.
There will be trains, markets, gardens, swimming, bad tourist decisions, and probably at least one meal Teddy would describe as financially irresponsible.
That should feel different.
It does feel different.
Mostly.
Leaving the diary still makes something inside me tighten. Writing things down has become less of a habit and more of a survival system. If something is in here, then whatever happened belongs somewhere. It cannot be corrected out of me quite as easily.
But taking it would mean carrying Bobby-thinking into Willowfen.
Every strange look would become a clue. Every old building would become suspicious. Every photograph would need examining. I would spend the whole trip trying to preserve it before I had actually lived it.
So the diary stays.
The evidence stays.
Candy stays here too, at least as much as a person can stay anywhere when she owns a phone and considers boundaries a decorative suggestion.
I am taking the Polaroid camera because photographs can be memories without becoming exhibits.
That is the plan, anyway.
Teddy just texted that he is outside.
Ellie is standing by the door with both suitcases, looking tired and excited and more like herself than she did yesterday morning.
I am going to lock the apartment.
I am going to hide this diary behind the AC vent in my old bedroom.
Then I am going to leave Meridia Falls with my girlfriend and try very hard not to solve anything.
We shall go and be tourists.
For once, I think we might.
I am writing this back at the Meridian, which matters because this morning I was still at the Bellweather Hotel and pretending final breakfasts were not a real category of emotional damage.
They are.
We took one last Polaroid at the table because Ellie said the hotel jam deserved documentation.
I said that was not how historical archives worked.
She said I had eaten enough of it to qualify as a primary source.
This is what happens when you go away with someone long enough to develop jokes that did not exist when you arrived.
Packing took longer than it should have because the room had somehow produced more belongings than we had brought into it.
There were postcards, two books from Willowfen Book & Map, a strange little puzzle for Teddy, a tiny enamel frog pin for Squirt, a tin of Bellweather tea for Gramps, the presents Ellie had chosen for her dad and Felicia, receipts we had kept for reasons that seemed important at the time, damp swim things refusing to become dry through optimism, and the Bellweather checkout envelope with everything folded neatly inside.
We knew where the bus stopped now.
We knew which bag held the tickets.
We knew not to sit on the left side of the train if Ellie wanted to see the lake properly before it disappeared.
None of that sounds important—but it was.
On Sunday, every part of the journey had felt like something Teddy had explained because we could not be trusted near public transport without supervision.
Today, we moved through it like people who had done this before.
The local bus took us back to Willowfen Station.
The train carried us away.
Ellie leaned against me for part of the journey, then woke up exactly long enough to claim she had not been asleep.
I did not argue because I value peace.
The announcement for West Shore Station came too quickly.
Gramps was waiting near the entrance with the car and the expression he gets when he is trying not to count whether we still have the same number of limbs as when we left.
He hugged us both, took the heavier suitcase before I could object, and asked how it had been.
“Brilliant,” I said.
Which was a completely useless word for six days of markets, rain, gardens, boats, swimming, too much food, one hotel room, several terrible photographs, and Ellie laughing in ways I had not heard before.
Gramps looked at me for a second.
Then he nodded like I had actually answered.
On the drive back, he mentioned that more restaurant deliveries were arriving over the weekend and Scott had changed the staff-training schedule again. There was something about table layouts and supplier delays, but it washed past me in the warm, familiar way Meridian problems usually do.
Ordinary problems—the kind involving chairs instead of erased memories.
When we came back into Meridia Falls, nothing looked different.
Main Street was still Main Street.
The Meridian was still waiting at the South Bay end of it.
Candy was still here for two more days.
Bobby was still hidden behind a school project.
But Willowfen had happened.
The tickets in my bag said so.
The photographs said so.
The private jokes said so.
Meridia Falls was still home.
It just was not the whole world anymore.
The apartment currently looks like Willowfen exploded.
Polaroids across the coffee table.
Train tickets under the pizza box.
Receipts nobody needs but neither of us can throw away.
Postcards, two books, the folded Bellweather envelope, the rest of our souvenirs and gifts, and the Willowfen map covered in circles, arrows, and one deeply unfair caricature of me and Ellie in a paddleboat.
I opened this diary for the first time since Sunday.
That is why Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are missing.
Not because nothing happened.
Because too much of it belonged to us before it belonged on paper.
The diary will still keep it. I know that now. The photographs, tickets, receipts, maps, postcards, and all the little things we carried home will do what written pages do when memory tries to slip.
They will hold the shape of it, ready for us to find again if we ever need to. Maybe in a memory blast. Maybe just in the ordinary way people remember the good parts when the world has not stolen them yet.
I just do not need to turn every second into a report.
Monday was when we became tourists.
We got lost on Lantern Row while holding a map. Ellie bought a second map from Willowfen Book & Map because apparently the first one had failed morally.
We ate at the Copper Kettle, where I ordered something based entirely on the word chocolate and discovered that this remains an excellent travel strategy.
Glasshouse Gardens rating: nine out of ten.
One point removed because Ellie took a Polaroid of me standing beside a plant that looked judgmental, and the resemblance was upsetting.
Tuesday was when we stopped treating the trip like recovery.
It was also when my new purple summer dress made its debut.
Yes. Me. In a dress I had chosen voluntarily.
This is what living with Ellie does to a person.
Alder Island had a ferry, a picnic trail, and paddleboats designed by someone who hated dignity.
Ellie did most of the steering.
I did most of the confidently incorrect advice.
There is a photograph someone took of us afterward, with bad hair and ice cream melting faster than we could eat it.
Neither of us looks careful.
That might be one of my favorites.
There was also the pendant.
We found it in one of those little Willowfen shops where everything looked handmade and slightly too nice to touch.
Small black stone. Almost round. Dark-silver edge. Fine chain. Except when the light caught it, there was purple hiding underneath.
I looked at it for slightly too long.
I did not buy it.
Ellie noticed both of those things.
She disappeared back into the shop later and gave it to me that evening.
“It was made for you,” she said.
Which was either extremely romantic or Ellie had just compared me to a slightly uneven black rock.
I am choosing romantic.
I am wearing it now.
I may never take it off.
Wednesday rained.
Proper rain.
The kind that turns every plan into a suggestion and makes old buildings smell like wet stone and gift shops.
There was also supposed to be a solar eclipse that afternoon, which we experienced mainly as the sky becoming slightly more committed to being gray.
Ellie said this still counted.
I remain unconvinced.
We went to the museum, hid in the bookshop, ate cake because weather is not allowed to win, and ended up back at the hotel with hot chocolate and our shoes drying near the heater.
That was when we talked about proof—not Bobby-proof.
The kind that mattered even if nobody else could see it.
Ellie said, “They don’t get to decide which parts of us are real.”
That is the line I am writing down.
The rest is ours.
Thursday felt like the kind of day people mean when they say vacation and then become annoying about it.
We walked by the lake before breakfast. The town was still half asleep and the water looked completely harmless, which was rude considering how much water has done to us lately.
Later there was the lakeside garden, another picnic, one final swim, and dinner at the Bellweather that required clothes that were actually dry.
My new denim skirt made its debut there too, because apparently one voluntary dress had opened a dangerous door.
The last Polaroid from Thursday is Ellie on the Bellweather Promenade at sunset.
She is laughing at me.
I am not writing why.
Some things can stay outside the evidence system.
Willowfen did not solve anything.
Candy still remembers things she should not.
Steve is still trapped inside whatever Candy and the adults around her have built.
Marilyn is still standing in the middle of consequences she did not choose.
Bobby is still waiting behind the Bizarre News Bulletin disguise.
None of that disappeared because we ate too much cake and went on a boat.
But something else happened too.
We learned the bus route.
We found a favorite breakfast table.
We built jokes that only existed because we were there long enough to need them.
We took photographs that were not evidence of danger.
I am keeping the tickets.
I am keeping the map.
I am keeping all the Polaroids.
Especially the one of Ellie laughing.
Not for Bobby.
For us.
Us-proof.
And I am not pinning that to Bobby.
Ellie’s phone buzzed while we were still sitting on the floor with an open pizza box between us and Willowfen spread across the room.
She looked down.
Then she went still.
Not dramatically. Ellie does not do dramatic unless someone has earned it.
Just enough that I stopped reaching for another slice.
She turned the phone toward me.
Candy: Can you come by tomorrow afternoon before I leave? Need to clear something up. Just you.
No explanation.
No fake smiley face.
No suggestion that I come too.
Just Ellie.
The same Ellie Candy had spent the Three Falls party trying to pull away from me one practical request at a time.
The same rules we had already agreed on.
No splitting up.
No private Candy conversations.
No letting her decide who stood where.
My eyes went from the message to the Polaroid beside Ellie’s knee.
Bellweather Promenade. Sunset. Ellie laughing so hard the picture had blurred slightly.
That happened.
Candy did not get to correct it out of us.
But she was already trying to choose the next frame.
If you’d like to talk about this diary entry, you’re welcome to share your thoughts in the chat.
Stay tuned, stay enchanted, and stay connected!
Warmest Regards,
DB
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