"Lauren, I want you to have this. Please Take care of Harry. I know that I do not have much longer." The next day she was gone. The entire last ten years of her life had been spent in the upper floor flat of a duplex. Harry was devastated. He wanted to spend his last days at the Printer's Union Home. So I made the trip west with him. It looked to me like a Victorian, Gothic Orphans Home. It did have a fabulous view of Pikes Peak. I spent a week there with him and then I had to return to my job. I'd taken a week of vacation time just so I could take Harry out to the home. When I left we knew we would never see each other again. He was dead also with in a year. Now all I really had to remember both of them was 'Toody's Diary'. She had written it to practice her English.

Maybe I should write a diary? My life is not as interesting. I was named after a movie star and I am the eldest of five children.

I'll tell you a story about Lauren Brunner.

Now my story's begun

She has three sisters,

and one brother.

Now my story is done.

Lauren did not think her story would be of any interest, so she never wrote another word. She preferred painting pictures and was rather good at it. She had won a scholarship to study art. Her high school had voted her the most likely to succeed. Perhaps she would have, had she not met Jerry Lebrune. He had picked her up at the art museum. She worked there. He was a reporter from out of town. The town was her hometown. She knew in her heart that fate and the angels had made him just for her. All of her friends said how dashing he was. She thought that he really cared about her. It was a shock when he told her that he was going overseas. He even asked her to go with him. He did not ask her to marry him. Had he done that, she would have quit school and gone with him. Right up until he actually left; she thought, 'he will not be able to leave me'. He was able to leave her, and he told her that he did not care if she saw other guys while he was gone. That really left her stunned. He did manage to send her a few post cards. Every three or four months, the post cards would come. The last ones came from Viet Nam. He was covering the war. Then she just never heard anything from him again.

She got a job in a little studio in Shaker. She had an apartment on Hessler St. She dated lots of guys, but none of them were like that Jerry Le Brune, the newspaper reporter. It was a coincidence that she picked up a discarded paper on the transit and read that Jerry had been killed. After that, life did not seem worth living.

Janelle Penington worked at the same studio and they had also gone to school together. It was Penny who talked her into going to Europe. She did not think that she would ever be able to afford such a thing. Penny was not only a gifted artist and designer. She was a talented musician. At this time Lauren came into a windfall, when a benevolent aunt left her a very small fortune. Against her own better judgment, Lauren decided to go to europe. "Keep America Beautiful, visit Europe!" Everyone seemed to be so happy for the two of them. No one discouraged her. It seemed to be a journey that destiny had planned.