She wrote about a boy named Derek. About how he sat two seats up in algebra and how she was failing algebra anyway and didn’t even care. She wrote about wanting a puppy so bad she could “literally die,” her words, and how she was going to wear me and her daddy down by summer.

She drew little hearts in the margins. She spelled “definitely” wrong every single time, which is so her I laughed and cried at the same time sitting there.

I read about a fight she had with Kayla over some boy that lasted exactly four days and then they were thick as thieves again. I read her grumble about chores and church and her curfew, this little voice fussing about her mean old mother, and I just held that page to my chest. To hear her fuss at me again. You don’t know what you’d give for that until it’s gone.

The thing that got me, the more I read, was watching her grow up right there on the page. Early on, her writing was big and round and bubbly, dotting her i’s with circles. But the further I went, the more it changed. The letters got bigger in a different way. Messier. Faster. Like she had more to say than her hand could keep up with. My little girl was turning into a young woman right in front of me, twenty years too late for me to see it the first time.

I should have stopped there. I think part of me knew where the pages were heading and didn’t want to get there. But you can’t stop. You can’t put your child down once you’ve found her again. So I kept turning.

The entries got shorter toward the spring. Less about Derek. Less about anything, really. A few pages where she just wrote that she felt sick in the mornings and figured it was nerves about her grades.

One where she wrote, “I keep crying and I don’t even know why.” I read that line about six times. I remember that spring. I remember thinking she was moody, being a teenager, slamming her door. I gave her space. Bless my heart, I thought I was being a good mom by giving her space.

There was an entry in June, just a few words. “I think something is wrong with me.” That’s all. And then a couple blank pages, like she couldn’t bring herself to write it down.

By then I had a feeling in my stomach I can’t even describe to you. I almost called my son to come sit with me. I almost closed the book. Instead I flipped to the very last thing she ever wrote, because I had to know, the way you have to know.

The last entry. July 14, 2005. Six in the morning. The day she died.