Read The Beginning: An eShort Prequel to the Bridge for Free Online

door.”
    Edna couldn’t help but think that in some ways the scrapbook would take the place of the baby books and yearbooks and family photo albums Donna and Charlie would never have. Donna seemed to be thinking the same thing, because once more she looked at the cover, and then she thumbed her way through the empty pages, as if she could see the way they might be filled in the years and decades to come.
    “It needs one thing. A picture of you beneath what you wrote.” Donna set her coffee cup down on an end table and hurried back toward the register. She pulled a camera from one of the adjacent cupboards. “Do you have your book? Little Women ?”
    Edna grinned. “In my purse.” She took it with her everywhere. Already she was on her third time through it.
    “Let’s see.” Donna surveyed the area. “Stay there. This is perfect. The light from the back window is straight on you.” Her tone was lighter, more full of life. “Hold your book like you’re reading it.”
    The woman’s enthusiasm was contagious. Edna found her copy of Little Women , crossed her legs, and held the novel open on her lap, opened to her favorite page, her favorite quote. It was the only one with the corner of the page bent over.
    Love is the only thing that we can carry with us when we go, and it makes the end so easy.
    She felt a sad smile fill her heart and move to her lips. The quote would stay with her always. As she looked at it, she didn’t hear Donna taking the picture until it was over.
    “There. Years from now when I’m an old lady, that picture . . . that’s how I’ll always remember you, Edna.”
    “Donna, you won’t need to remember me. I’ll still be sitting in that chair reading whatever book you put in my hands.”
    Donna held up the camera. “I like that picture even better than the one I just took.”
    The next half hour passed quickly, and Edna had to get to work. When she stopped in a few days later, the scrapbook was on the counter for everyone to see. And the photograph Donna had taken was pasted in the scrapbook right where she said she was going to put it: beneath Edna’s words.
    Edna had a feeling that someday when she looked back, the scrapbook—and the picture of herself with her precious copy of Little Women —would mean as much to her as it would to Donna. Suddenly a realization hit her, one that filled her with indescribable joy.
    She had just now been thinking about the future! Not tomorrow or next week. But years from now. Thinking about it without fear or worry or dread. And without wondering how she was going to survive without Tom Carlton. Which could only mean one thing: Though she would never stop missing her husband, she was healing.
    She was going to make it.
    Because of the Bartons and The Bridge and a handful of books including one that her friend, Donna, had somehow known she needed. The one God wanted her to read.
    Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.

    Donna waited until Edna was gone before she called Charlie to the front of the store. He loved the scrapbook as much as she did, but he hadn’t seen the developed picture of Edna yet.
    “Look at this.” Donna motioned Charlie to her side. “Our first photograph in the scrapbook.” She opened the front cover and showed him her work.
    “Hmmm.” Charlie leaned closer. “That’s her, all right. The look in her eyes . . . like she’s captured by the story.”
    “She was.” Donna smiled at the picture of her new friend. “She didn’t hear me click the camera.”
    “Fills my heart, Donna . . . This is what we wanted with The Bridge.”
    “Yes.” She turned to him and put her hands on his shoulders. “You’re a brilliant businessman, Charlie. Your father was wrong.”
    Gratitude shone in his eyes. “I love you.”
    She leaned close and kissed him. “You were born for this.”
    “We both were.”
    For a few seconds they were quiet, and Donna wondered if, like her, he was thinking about their little girl. “Say