Being Jolene Read Online Free PDF Page A

do.
    Elizabeth must’ve gotten the point because she walked off. Strange. Each day made me ask why in the world did I seclude myself in this part of the country.
    ***
    For the next three mornings I sat on my porch in the mid morning, not having to go into work till night. I was not sitting there because I was hoping that the very sexy Ty, hot and sweaty from a run, would drop in again from the trail. Nope. Not at all. Because you know, the bad sex and all.
    And yet . . . I would be lying if he hadn’t crossed my mind once or twice in the last few days.
    I looked down at the sketch in my hand. It was crap. I was in a funk, not having any inspiration lately. Which didn’t make sense at all, because while secluded, I was in one of the most beautiful parts of the country. I should have been flooded with inspiration, but alas I found myself with shitty sketches of empty faces. I sat down the pad of paper and picked up the journal my dad had given me before I left. The cover was worn leather, scuffed up and the yellowed pages were falling out. I flipped through the old pages but I hadn’t actually read any of it yet. I didn’t know why, apparently this was a look into my past, a diary of my great grandmother. I had spent most of my life with just my Dad, so it was hard to understand that I had “family,” even if they were long gone. I remembered what my Dad had said when I had stopped by his place before I left . . .
    I had walked into the house, knowing exactly where to find him. At this time in the evening, he would be in the office, having his night cap after his broadcast. Dad was Bobby Mets, Local News 7 main newscaster, bringing you Boise’s latest at 5 o’clock. When I walked into the office though, he was just my dad having a brandy.
    “Hey Jo. All ready for the summer?”
    I had already told him I would be gone all summer and that Hannah would be staying in my place. He was happy for me to take a break from Boise.
    “Yeah. I’m already to go, but I’ll be back for supplies for whatever I need over the summer. I’ll visit, okay?”
    He got up from his large leather regal chair and kissed me on the top of my head. My dad was really the only family I had. He walked over to his bookshelf and grabbed an older book off the shelf.
    “Here, I want you to have this.”
    I took the tattered book from his hands. “What is it?”
    For a second he gave me pensive look. “Jolene, I’ve tried to give you everything I could, try to be enough family for both parents, but I know I haven’t been perfect.”
    “No, Dad-”
    “Let me finish. I know it wasn’t easy to only have me growing up. I can’t change that, but I feel like this is a good time to give you this. Family is more than a mom and dad, but family is roots. You have roots Jo, even if I’ve been failing at telling you about it. This is a journal of a woman named Margret Mary Brown. Maggie for short. She was your great grandmother times three. She was a settler up in a town called Pikesville with her husband, Jed. It’s by Gypsum but she moved to that part during the Gold Rush and kept track of her time there. I want you to have this journal, so you can understand your roots, you heritage. You’re from a strong line of woman and you need to know that.”
    I glanced at the journal in my hand, wondering why type of life Margret had lived.
    “Thanks.” Because I really didn’t know what else to say. He was right; the only thing I knew was my dad when it came to family. The time with my mother I tried to block from my memory. I took the journal and put it delicately in my bag. He told me to be safe this summer and I was on my way.
    And now here I sat, with the same journal in my hand. I was almost scared to read it, to open myself up to a person no longer here. What would I find in the pages of Maggie’s journal? Heartache, struggle, survival? I opened the journal to the first page,
    “ A new world was in front of my feet, a world I knew nothing