I prompted myself to read what it said, though I felt a twinge of nervousness. Still, I proceeded. The first entry read:

March 15, 1989

Dear Mother,
A new, albeit tiny beginning lay before me. This should come to me as a sort of reassurance, in a sense. After such tragic endings, you’d think that any beginning would give me even the slightest bit of hope. Alas, that is not as true as I wish it was. You see, Father gave me this journal a few months ago, and I decided to start writing in it now. It might be pleasing to fill up the empty, crisp pages of this lovely book. Hence, what I am writing now, this first entry, can be interpreted as a new beginning.