DEAR LISA | JENLISA

TWELVE

LISA

Month three, letter number three

May
***

Hey there, hottie.

I want you to know that I'm fine. I'm fine as I write this letter-it's been a good string of days, and we're here on the Cape. What a gift this house has been, Lisa! Waking up to the sound of the ocean, falling asleep under the Milky Way, being able to have all our friends and family come visit . . . Thank you for being so thoughtful and generous and wonderful.

Your mom is here right now, making us stuffed cabbage with pork, and even though I'm sitting outside, I'm practically drooling. I love your mom. She's so practical and . . . cool. She's a badass, really. Please make sure you visit her a lot after I die. She'll need to take care of you, and you'll need her. She always said getting knocked up was the best thing that ever happened to her.

Sometimes, I dream about my dad, as you know. But last night, I dreamed that he and I were about to have lunch with . . . guess who? Your father. He wanted to meet you, and Dad and I were going to screen him first. If he was a jerk, we were making plans to beat him up, and laughing so much. Then the dream changed, and my dad and I were in our old backyard, throwing the softball back and forth, like we did when I played in sixth grade. It was nice to see him.

I think these dreams are reassurances that my dad will be with me when I die. So I'm not alone, okay, honey? And you know I'll be watching over you. I'm safe and sound, just like when I wrote this. It's just next-level stuff here in the Great Beyond.

So this is the third month without me, and I'm guessing that you could use some new clothes. I know . . . this is not that big a deal in the scheme of mourning, but since you have no fashion sense and I'm not there to tell you to get rid of those cargo pants and you have an ass that can only be described as Justin Trudeau Level of Perfection-

Lisa laughed out loud. She'd always had a thing for the Canadian prime minister.

-I want you to go shopping. At the mall.

Oh, stop panicking! You can do it! Go by yourself, honey. No leaning on Jisoo or Roseanne for help. You're a wildly successful, gorgeous entrepreneur. Stop dressing like an old woman and/or the Unabomber.

You know how I loved clothes. Something new always made me feel fresh and excited to get dressed. It's a little thing, but it works.

Good luck, honey! I love you so much.

Jennie

PS, Give your mom a big hug and tell her how much I loved her. Even though she already knows.

Prip did know. Jennie had left her a letter, too. Apparently, everyone got one-her mother, her mother, Haein, Jisoo, Roseanne, even Sebastian and Octavia, which they were supposed to open on their sixteenth birthdays. Mara from RISD, Asmaa from the Hope Center, Bruce the Mighty and Beneficent, Louise and Santino, her coworkers. (Bruce had emailed her a couple of weeks ago to say that he'd fired that nasty Lori Cantore. Personality conflict, Bruce had said.)

So. Jennie had obviously sensed death was coming, but she never said a word. Jennie lived in the moment more perfectly than anyone she'd ever known, and she still managed to write to everyone she loved for when she was gone. Only she could've been that generous, that thoughtful, spending her time on earth so the people left behind would have something from her.