CHAPTER 33
I reached in and my fingers immediately touched it. I paused—another deep breath—gripped it and then pulled it out. The smell hit me first: dusty, musty and burnt. I sat back against the wall and flipped the bedside light on. I looked down at my hands; I was cradling what was clearly a diary, but one that had been burned. It looked like it had been pulled out of the flames at the very last moment, just before it disintegrated. I opened the first page and recognized the writing immediately. It was her—Edith.
I opened it gently. It was so damaged and fragile that bits of burnt paper fluttered out of it like dead butterfly wings. I tried to pick them up, but they disintegrated in my fingers—disappearing along with their words and secrets. An entire page fell out and I picked it up and looked at it. A tear came to my eye the moment I started reading it.
Dear Diary,
I sat at my desk today for hours, just staring at the river and thinking about A. I kept looking at the river and wondering where it came from. I know it runs into the sea, but where does it start? I bet it starts somewhere exotic. Somewhere better than here—mind you, anywhere is better than here. Maybe it starts all the way up at the top of Africa, by the pyramids of Giza. Maybe it travels through tangled jungles, large, open savannas, hot, sandy deserts and over great mountain ranges, just to get here.
If only A and I could build a boat and sail away together, right back up that river. Sail as far away from this place as possible. We could find a little spot together, somewhere on its banks, away from the world, and we could live there like castaways. It would certainly be an adventure.
I stood up slowly, clutching the diary to my chest, and walked over to the window.How could this be?The coincidence seemed too great and I wondered if I wasn’t grasping at straws, here, making associations where there were none to be made. Maybe I was so desperate that I was seeing what I wanted to see? Or maybe this was a dream, a hallucination?
I opened the diary again to a random page, but it was too badly burnt to read, so I carefully flipped to the next page, and the next, until I was able to see handwriting.
Dear Diary,
I couldn’t sleep again last night. I lay in bed, staring up at the crack in my ceiling—the crack that runs the entire length of it, dividing it into two separate halves. When I looked at it, I couldn’t stop thinking about A and me. How we are so separated. How a crack runs a line through the middle of our lives and pushes us apart, forces us into two separate parts. Him on his side, me on my side, and never the twain shall meet. Well, we did meet. I can’t ever unmeet him, and nor do I want to. But we can’t be together, either, and it is tearing me apart. Ripping me in two . . .
Slowly, I looked up, and the same crack that she’d looked up at stared down at me. My fingers loosened. The diary fell from my hand and cascaded to the floor, burnt pages falling out like brown autumn leaves dropping from the trees. My heart raced, adrenalin making me nauseous and dizzy as it ripped through my veins like a speedboat cutting through the surf. I shook my head in utter disbelief. This couldnotbe happening. But it was. How was this even possible? And who the hell was Ashley? If this house had been in her family for 200 years . . . I stifled a gasp as it started to dawn on me, like wiping the condensation off a window and being able to look outside again and see the bigger picture. Was she Edith’s granddaughter?
I sat down on the bed. There was no way I could leave now. This was a sign, if ever I’d seen one. I had to stay here and find out more. It was as if someone was handing me a gift on a shiny, silver platter. But something also gnawed at me, something in the back of my mind, reminding me that silver also tarnishes. It goes black and its sheen disappears; it doesn’t last forever. And, before you know it, you’re scrubbing the damage away until your hands bleed.
I lay down on the bed and looked up at the ceiling again. I wondered if she’d ever thought of giving up on her love for him, whether she’d considered just walking away from the man she loved. It would have been so much easier, after all; it would have been legal, too. But she hadn’t. From what I’d read so far, she had stayed strong, right up to the very end. This idea both humbled and crippled me. How could someone so young have been so brave in the face of so much? She’d clung on, despite what the whole world around her had thought about her and the relationship! I wasn’t like that at all. She was ten times the woman I was, or would probably ever be.
Some barely-there voice in my head seemed to call out to me. I tried to listen to it, but couldn’t quite hear it clearly. I climbed off the bed and walked back over to the diary. I started picking the pages up gently and slotting them back into the book as carefully as I could, not to cause any more damage. One of the pages caught my attention; it had been decorated with intricate patterns and hearts, and, in the middle of the page, four words . . .
This is my story . . .
And then I heard what the voice in my head was trying to say. “Tell it,” it said to me.
I stood up and looked at the ceiling, and something inside told me what I needed to do.
