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“With Frasier. What is that?” he asked, indicating her hand, which she had at an awkward angle to her side, as if holding the hand of an invisible child.
“Oh, it’s henna.” She wiggled her fingers. “It’s not dry yet. It’s my birthday present from Charlotte.”
“Is today your birthday?” That made him smile, the same smile from his early school photos. She found herself thinking,There you are.
“I’m nineteen. And I finally got to meet you in person on this day, of all days. That’s a pretty good present.” Oh, God. Did she just say that? She made a pained face, which made him laugh.
“I’m glad I could oblige,” he said.
“Listen, feel free to say no, because I’m basically just a well-meaning, slightly excitable stranger, but Mac and Charlotte and I are having a get-together tonight. If you don’t have anything planned, would you like to come?”
“You want me to come to your birthday party?”
“Open to all Dellawisp members, free of charge. We’re meeting on Charlotte’s patio. If you come, I promise not to scream your name and run to you, like I’ve done twice already,” she said. “Think about it.”
“I don’t know, that’s a nice way to be greeted.”
“You say that now, but wait until I do it to you in public.”
He stared at her before saying, “You’re exactly how I imagined you.”
“Thank you,” she said, delighted with the idea of him imagining anything about her. But then, “Wait. Was that a compliment?”
“Yes,” he said, “it was a compliment.”
Oliver smiled as he watched her walk back through the gate. Then he realized he was still carrying the box and his smile faded. He didn’t know how much time passed as he debated what to do with it before he finally got into his 4Runner and put the box beside him on the passenger seat.
But then he thought,What good would keeping this do?He didn’twant the cheap painting or the flower vase or the signed book or the necklace with his father’s name on it. He certainly didn’t want to read her childhood diaries. This box was all about her, what she cared about,whoshe cared about.
And he was absent from it. He would always be absent from it.
He had to make peace with that, finally.
He got out with the box and went to the dumpster and threw the box in. He jogged back to his car and tore out of the alley as if the box were about to jump back out and chase him. He was glad no one saw him.
Chapter Eighteen
Frasier watched Oliver on the new security monitor in his office, watched him throw away the box before running off. Lizbeth’s reaction to it was immediate and frantic. Whatever she wanted to happen had something to do with that box.
But what was in the box? Just some cheap knickknacks and her diaries.
Oh, Christ.
The story she wanted him to know.
It was in the diaries.
But whatever it was, Oliverdidn’twant to know.
And here Frasier was, caught in between, as he always was.
With a deep sigh, Frasier left his office and went to the dumpster. He dug out the box and retrieved the diaries. There were ten of them, some palm-sized and girly with flimsy locks, others simply spiral-bound notebooks. He carried them all back to his office and put them in an old birdseed bag.
“There. Safe and sound,” he said as he stuffed the bag insideone of the file drawers, not intending to read them right away. He thought it would be enough for her to know that he’d saved them.
But a gust of air blew around the office, fluttering papers on his desk and lifting the edges of the bird sketches tacked to the wall, almost as if they were taking flight. Oliver was right. Lizbeth didn’t want peace. She wanted chaos. And whatever was in those diaries was going to cause it.
He took them back out, irritated. It was a familiar feeling, as he’d often been irritated with Lizbeth when she was alive. The lines were blurred in the in-between, making him sometimes forget which side he was dealing with. He dumped the diaries on his desk, and then he sat down and found the oldest one and began to read.
