Dear Rosie - Page 205

ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-SEVEN

NATE

“Rosie, Rosie, Rosie.” My vision blurs as I bump into the wall. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Agony radiates through my body as I slide down the wall until I’m sitting on the floor.

I clutch Rosie’s fucking suicide letter in one hand and press the other hand to my chest.

And then I cry.

I’ve never cried so much in my life.

I’ve never feltso muchin my life.

Not until Rosie.

Not until this beautiful woman.

This lonely girl.

This child version ofmy personwho went through so much hell.

I curl forward.

And I remember the last letter in the box.

The last one she wrote me.

The one where she said she saw me on the TV in the hospital.

I think of the way my heart broke reading that.

How I read it… but how I didn’t fucking understand.

A sound crawls out of my throat. And it’s anguish.

This is the secret.

This is the barbed wire Rosie keeps wrapped around her soul.

And she called it murder.

It wasn’t fucking murder.

It was self-defense.

I press my hand harder against my chest, like I can push my heart back in time.

Like I can help her.

She was just a kid.

At fucking nineteen, Rosie was still a child who had to kill her father in self-defense.

It was him or me. And I only had enough pills for one of us.

I squeeze my eyes shut and focus on trying to breathe.