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“Do you want me to help you clean up?” he asks.
“Sure, if you want to load everything into the boxes and set them on my desk, that would be great. I’ll start cataloging everything tomorrow.”
“Wonderful,” Evan says. He starts to roll up a map and then pauses. “I believe you.”
“Oh, about?”
“The diary. I believe that Beatrix left some sort of documentation. She knew how to read and write. Most of Martin’s wooing involved sending her poems and sonnets. She was smart. She wasn’t some helpless scullery maid like this town makes her out to be,” Evan says.
“I found it the first night I got to Idylewylde Hall, in between my closet and the wall. There was a cubby. The board was loose, and I pried it open, and that’s when I found the diary. It’s tiny, 4 by 5 at the most, but it’s real. Evan, it’s real! I—” I suddenly remember my transcriptions. I rush over to my bag and wrench my laptop out, setting my laptop on the table.
“I transcribed a bunch of entries! Here!” I say. Evan rushes to my side. I open the Word document, and a blank screen appears.
“This is supposed to be 5,000 words,” I squeak. I try and recover the file, but it’s no use. The only thing my computer will show me is a blank document.
“I, Evan, I swear. I’m not crazy!” I click around frantically, trying to recover at least one entry, but nothing shows up.
“I believe you,” Evan says quietly.
He studies the grain of the table, and when he speaks next, it’s so quiet I can barely hear him.
“Beatrix is tricky. She likes to mess with people.”
After dinner, I turn over everything in my bedroom. I take all my clothes out of the closet and check the cubby hole. There’s nothing but mouse droppings and cobwebs. I check beneath my bed, in the space between the dresser and the wall, but there’s nothing. I stand in the hallway, hands on my hips, trying to determine my next move.
I yank the silver cord and unearth the ladder leading up to the attic. If what Evan said is true, and Beatrix does like to mess with people, then maybe she’s going to make me work for this.
The attic is cold even though we’re experiencing the last few humid days of August. It’s the sort of dark that feels dense. I reach out to screw in the light bulb, and I feel something brush against my hand. It’s too big to be a bug and feels firm and warm, like a hand. When I finally screw in the lightbulb, Joseph stands before me.
I scream, a blood-curdling scream. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing! Shouldn’t you be off the clock?”
“I experienced a couple of technical difficulties at work today. I needed to check some of the boxes.”
Joseph laughs humorlessly and shakes his head. “Let me guess, the ghost fucked with your files.”
“How did you know?”
“I didn’t! I was joking! Eleanor, you’re starting to sound like my mother. You can’t seriously be blaming a ghost for your disorganization. I feel like she has better things to do than mess with a librarian, no offense.”
“I’m not disorganized!” I insist, placing my hands on my hips.
Joseph sighs. “Do you think it would help if you took a break?”
“No! What I need is to find this fucking diary.”
I scoot past Joseph, aware that our bodies are impossibly close. I find a cardboard box and wrench it forward.
“Beatrix’s diary?” he asks.
I nod.
“Now, you’re losing me. There’s no way she kept a fucking diary. This isn’t a Jane Austen novel.”
“If you’re going to make that joke, at least mention a Bronte sister.”
“If you’re going to claim that Beatrix kept fucking detailed missives, at least have the proof.”
