Mom and Dad were quiet with each other in the front seat as we drove. I sat in the back, holding the jar of ashes tight, mostly noticing how heavy it felt, and thinking of what it contained. What’s left of what your body was—once the girl with bare shoulder blades, giggling, once the girl galloping an imaginary horse, once the girl sleeping in her sequined red dress—was now ash in a jar. Grains of bone. But then, I knew it wasn’t you anymore. You were somewhere more.

After we parked at our spot, Mom and Dad followed me out onto the tracks. And as I walked across them, it became the place it had always been while you were alive. The place we first discovered when we came for walks with Mom and Dad, the two of us running ahead of them and chasing the sky. The place we spent hours sitting, talking, and playing Poohsticks. The river we’d loved in every season was moving quietly now for summer. I handed Mom the jar first, and she reached in and took the ashes in her hands. As she let them go, her eyes filled with tears. She reached out for me as she passed the jar to Dad. He scattered a handful and said, “May, this land is your land.”

Remember? That song he’d sing us? From California, to the New York Island, From the redwood forest, to the Gulf Stream waters … He was right. It is your land, all of it. You are everywhere in it. The whole big world we dreamed of.

When Dad handed the jar to me, I poured out the rest of the ashes and watched the wind carry them down to the water. Little bits still stuck to my fingers. I said, “She’s free now.”

And then Dad started sobbing like a little kid. I’ve never seen him that way before. I went to hug him. Mom stood off to the side, but eventually she came over, too, and all of our bodies were shaking together.

When it was over, Dad ruffled my hair and said, “I love you, Laurel.”

“I love you, too, Dad.”

“You’re strong, but you’re still our baby girl,” Mom said. Her eyes met Dad’s and held on to them for a moment. “We’re proud of you. Your sister is, too.”

I smiled at them and asked, “Do you want to play Poohsticks?”

They laughed. Dad said, “I haven’t thought about that game in years.”

“May and I still used to play together,” I said, “after you taught us here. We’ll do one for her, too.”

So we crossed the tracks onto the forest side to look for sticks. Mom picked one with a pretty knot on the wood. Dad’s was like a walking stick. I got myself one with the bark still on, and I got you a smooth one, straight and strong. We went back on the bridge and leaned over the edge, and “One, two, three, drop,” Dad counted. And as we ran to the other side to see, yours won! I told them it’s because you were hurrying toward the sea.

I imagined your stick, washing in the waves for hundreds of years, turning to driftwood, smooth and hard like stone. I imagined a little girl finding it on a beach so many years later. Saving it on her shelf, where she put the things that made her feel like the world was magical.

May, I decided that I might want to be a poet when I grow up. Which is pretty much now, because I guess this is what growing up is like. So, I wrote my first poem this week. I wrote it for you. Before we left the bridge, I read it out loud to you.

A Love Letter for My Sister

A ghost cannot open an envelope. Still I address

this to you—I am saving this world for you, see.

River water runs. Fields fill with golden.

Apples bitten. A ghost cannot open

an envelope. A ghost cannot run.

The road travels its forever distance.

Two girls pause by a bridge, to notice.

The fall leaves don’t fall hard.

The spring lasts forever, after a storm.

I am opening this envelope for you, see.

An open blue flower. A paper bag holds a candle.

I am letting the world open me.

A leaf falls. A lead smudge

leads to a girl in a red dress.

I am reading the letters you meant for me to see.

I hope that you will open the envelopes,

so I am opening the world inside of me.

I am sending my letters to you.

The river goes to the ocean.

The ocean sounds infinite.

We are big enough to hear it.

Both of us.

Love always,

Your sister, Laurel

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

When I think about the fact that Love Letters to the Dead is now a book that exists not only in my head or heart or on my computer screen, but in the world, gratitude feels like an understatement. I offer my most full-hearted thank you! to everyone who made it so.

To Stephen Chbosky, my dear friend and mentor, who told me I should write a novel to begin with, then gave it his boundless support: thank you for letting me be a part of telling your stories and for helping me learn to tell mine.

To Liz Maccie, who was the first person to read the very first draft of this book: thank you for seeing what it could become and for your unconditional love and encouragement that gave me faith to carry it through. Your friendship is a true guiding light.

To Hannah Davey, who shared my first days of high school and who has been my forever best friend ever since (and who is happily also a genius reader): thank you for making memories with me that become stories, for sharing stories with me that become memories, and for growing up with me for so long.

Doug Hall, my love, I am so grateful for you every day. Thank you for not only helping me to become a better writer, but for helping me to become who I needed to be to finish writing this story.

I have been astoundingly lucky to work with the brilliant Joy Peskin, who is a dream of an editor and who has treated Laurel and her family and friends with the utmost attention and generosity. Joy, thank you for seeing what I’d kept hidden and helping me to bring it onto the page and into the light.

To my wonderful agent, Richard Florest, thank you for believing in this story from the beginning and fighting for it with such vigilance and compassion at every step along the way. A book couldn’t have a better friend.

To the people at FSG: I am wowed by you all and so grateful that you have embraced this story and lent it your hearts and amazing minds. Thank you especially to Katie Fee, Molly Brouillette, Caitlin Sweeny, Holly Hunnicutt, and Andrew Arnold for all that you have done to shepherd Love Letters to the Dead into the world.

To my friends and early readers, Anat Benzvi, Kai Beverly-Whittemore, Michael Bortman, Matt Bradly, Sean Bradly, Willa Dorn, Lauren Gould, Lianne Halfon, Will Slocomb, Katie Tabb, and Sarah Weiss, thank you for your support, inspiration, and insight. This book wouldn’t be what it is without you. Thank you also to all of my wonderful teachers at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the University of Chicago, and the Albuquerque Academy, who changed my life and made this book possible for me. Thank you to Carol Hekman. And thank you to my stepmom, Jamie Wells, for her support and kindness.

To Kurt Cobain, Judy Garland, Elizabeth Bishop, Amelia Earhart, River Phoenix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Amy Winehouse, Heath Ledger, Allan Lane, E. E. Cummings, and John Keats, thank you for your beautiful lives and work, which continue to inspire me and so many others.

To my father, Tom, thank you for your endless supply of love and encouragement, honesty, guidance, and wisdom. For a lifetime of love and our lives together. I am so proud to be your daughter.