Her Last Letter by Nancy C. Johnson Page A

account.”
    “So, seeing Josh has made you question your relationship with Trevor?”
    “Yes.”
    “Has anything else happened that would make you feel this way? Besides, Josh, I mean.”
    “No … well, maybe some little things. Trevor has been working a lot lately. That bothers me. I don’t get to see him as much.”
    “Have you talked to him about it?”
    “No.”
    “What’s stopping you?”
    “I don’t think it would do any good.”
    “Hmm. I’m sensing some anger here.” Janet stared at me, waiting for me to respond. Finally, after what felt like an interminable silence, I did.
    “If I’m angry, I’d have to say that I’m mostly angry at myself. I’m stupidly naive when it comes to the people I care about. I blindly accept whatever they put in front of me, when instead I should take a step back and see what’s really going on.”
    “Are you still talking about Trevor here?”
    “Trevor, sure.”
    “Not Kelly?”
    “Well, yes, Kelly too. I was certainly stupid with her. If I hadn’t been so stupidly naive, maybe she’d still be alive.” I had to stop talking for a moment, reign in all the old feelings that engulfed me whenever I spoke her name. “I didn’t know her either. I really didn’t. When you love someone that much, you can’t see them. I couldn’t anyway. And maybe I didn’t want to see who she really was, because then I’d be forced to admit she wasn’t everything I wanted her to be. Still … why couldn’t she trust me? If she had a drug problem, why couldn’t she tell me about it? I could have helped her. I wouldn’t have stopped loving her. Didn’t she know that? I never would have stopped loving her.”
    “But maybe she wasn’t willing to let you. Unfortunately, we’ll never know why she was reluctant to seek help.”
    “I wish so much that I could talk to her. I do, sometimes, when I’m alone. I want so much to know what happened … why it happened. How could anyone do that to her? Only a monster could have slaughtered her like that. He ran her down-like she was nothing-like she was dirt. I swear if I could, I’d kill him. I’d kill him and never regret it for a single moment.” My stomach rolled and I felt the searing hatred rise in my throat, bubbling up its caustic acid.
    “Linda told me Kelly was on drugs, said it was obvious, but I didn’t believe her. I even took Kelly aside one day and stood her in front of me and asked her point blank, ‘Are you taking drugs? I don’t want to think so, but if you are I need to know. So please, tell me the truth.’ Do you know what she said? Right to my face she said, ‘I’m not doing drugs, Gwyn. I wouldn’t do that. God, I can’t believe you’re asking me this.’ I told her I had to ask because I was worried about her, that she didn’t seem … right. She got a little angry, then told me I shouldn’t worry about her, that I worried about everything, that I’ve always worried too much and maybe I was the one with the problem. Then she took that back and apologized, told me again that, no, she didn’t do drugs. Well, maybe a little weed, when she was in school, but that was stupid and she knew it, so she’d quit. She had me convinced that Linda was absolutely wrong. It was a real relief at the time. But then, of course, they found cocaine in her system, and other drugs I can’t even pronounce were stashed in her medicine chest disguised as cold medicine or cough drops or whatever. God, it hurt. It hurt so much to think she would lie to me like that.”
    Janet sat quiet, then finally spoke.
    “You can’t blame yourself, Gwyn. We’ll never know exactly why Kelly felt she had to lie. But you do have to stop thinking you could have changed her.”
    Numbly, I brushed away tears with the back of my hand.
    “I know how very much you loved Kelly, and I believe she knew that too. Maybe she felt you were the only one left who still believed in her, who saw something in her that was truly special. Maybe she