Love, Lauren

Dear Raul:

A light rain is falling as I type this message to you. The clouds outside my window look fat and happy with rain, like they could do this all week long if they wanted to. I am in the library at Abigail's house and we are both sipping tea and eating one of Esperanza's scones. She calls them empanadas but they are really just scones with crimped edges. I saw the recipe she used. I pointed that out to her - all in fun- and she told me with a frown that she put a dash of cayenne pepper and coriander in the mixing bowl which unBritished the dough and made them more an empanada than anything else. She doesn't laugh at her own little jokes these days. She is already grieving the loss of everything that defines her day.

Abigail grows weaker. I think she is in more pain now than she admits. I don't think she refuses to complain because she's brave, though she is that, I think she believes the pain is like a cleansing penance for all the things she wishes she had done differently. It does no good to tell her she has already paid for the mistakes she has made.

The diary will be released on April 1 and I am as nervous as I am excited. My agent wants me to throw a launch party for it at the local bookstore but that's not what I am going to do. I am going to wait until the gallery opens, probably in May or June, and the celebration will not be the book published but the diary displayed. Mercy's diary. Not my book.

I pray everyday Abigail will live long enough to see it. . .
Miss you,
Love, Lauren