We finally left half an hour later. Gillian and I hugged Bryce good-bye, and we all thanked him for dinner. Bryce and Helena remained at the table, clearly in no rush to leave. She spread open one of the brochures she’d tucked away earlier and pointed to something. Bryce offered his opinion. Gillian and I walked to the exit together while Jared and Ryan followed behind, chatting amiably as if they had always been on good terms.
“Wow! That was one emotional psychodrama,” Gillian whispered. “Are they always like this when they get together?”
“I hope not.”
We both rolled our eyes and giggled.
“I could tell you didn’t want to talk about the possibility that their mother had left a journal, but the idea that she might have is exciting.”
“Yes, but there’s no point in getting Bryce’s hopes up if it doesn’t pan out.”
In the car, Jared said, “That didn’t go too badly.” He leaned over to kiss me, but I pulled away.
“What’s wrong, Carrie?”
“Are you serious? It was awful! From the moment we arrived, I couldn’t wait to leave.”
“Really?” He sniffed as he backed out of the parking spot.
“For starters, your brother is obnoxious and mean-spirited and puts you down every chance he gets.”
“That’s Ryan,” he muttered.
“For another, I asked you not to mention that your mother wrote during her free time in the library. It may have been a journal, or for all we know, she was composing a short story.”
“What’s wrong with their knowing? You can’t think any of them murdered my mother.”
I had my suspicions but thought it wise not to mention them. “Why get their hopes up when we have nothing real to go on? Your mom wrote in the library fifteen years ago. We have no reason to believe she hid whatever she wrote in some secret cranny. She might have brought the pages home with her. She might have ripped them up. That what she wrote still exists is pure speculation.”
“Won’t you reconsider going back up to the attic to search for her journal?”
I let out a snort of exasperation. “Sorry, Jared. It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.”
That said, we drove the rest of the way home in silence.
* * *
Though I was exhausted, I was unable to fall asleep that night. I kept rehashing the evening’s conversations, trying to figure out exactly what was troubling me. So the Foster family wasn’t the happy, close-knit unit they and their Clover Ridge neighbors would have had everyone believe. Bryce had been a workaholic. Laura had felt neglected and unhappy and had looked for love elsewhere. Ryan had serious anger management issues even before his parents’ marriage began to fray.
And Jared? I believed he’d been a kindhearted boy who’d been buffeted about by his parents’ and brother’s dysfunctional behavior. Tonight I’d observed how desperate he was to win his father’s and brother’s goodwill and approval. Why else had he been so eager to tell them about the possible journal when we’d agreed not to share that with anyone? I’d made my feelings very clear on the subject, but he ignored both my feelings and me.
I finally drifted off and awoke at five thirty, unable to sleep any longer. A strange dream about digging in a cave was fading as I woke, and I knew I wanted to go back to the attic and try once again to find Laura’s journal. Only this time, I wouldn’t tell Jared.
* * *
Sunday at noon, I carried Smoky Joe into the library, which was suddenly bedecked with Thanksgiving decorations. As soon as I set him down, he sniffed at the pilgrims, turkeys, scarecrows, and dried bunches of colored corn arraying every nook and cranny. Many of our upcoming programs were in celebration of the holiday.
I was glad that neither Trish nor Susan was scheduled to come in that day. I needed to be alone to work out whatever was disturbing my peace of mind. I was disappointed in Jared. I had no idea if we’d be seeing each other again. What’s more, I didn’t know that I cared.
“You look down in the mouth for a sunny November afternoon.”
I looked up from my computer into Evelyn’s smiling face.
“What are you so happy about?”
“Nothing in particular. I sensed you weren’t in the best of moods, and I’ve come to cheer you up.”
“I could use cheering up,” I admitted. “I was at the dinner from hell last night.”
“Do tell.”
When I finished my account, she tsk-tsked. “Not a fun evening for you. How did Jared and Ryan take to Helena dating their father?”
“Not as badly as I thought they would. When Jared first found out, he carried on about how she was the most awful person, but he didn’t seem upset by her being with us last night.”
Evelyn’s eyebrows shot up. “And Ryan?”
“He was too busy being offensive and putting Jared down to go after Helena.”
“He’ll get to her yet,” Evelyn murmured.
“Was he always so angry and scornful?”
“I’m afraid so. Even as a child, he gave his parents a difficult time. Poor Jared adored his older brother and tried to keep up with him.”
“I was annoyed with Jared for telling them Laura might have kept a journal after I’d told him not to mention it. I explained that the storage place where she might have written was now full of cartons of books that no one could possibly go through.”
“That attic is a mess.”
“I was surprised to see Dorothy bringing a book down from there. That she managed to find anything amazes me.”
Evelyn laughed. “Dorothy has many faults, but she’s a fantastic organizer. I imagine she made sure that the old reference books were placed in cartons labeled ‘Reference.’”
“But searching for Laura’s pages is something else. I wouldn’t know the first place to look.”
Evelyn grinned. “As to that, I have a few ideas.”
Having nothing pressing to do at the moment, I headed for the door that led to the attic. Evelyn kept pace beside me. A few patrons stopped me to ask questions about upcoming programs. I answered them as patiently as I could. I sensed Evelyn knew more than she was saying, and I was eager to find out what it could be.
Once upstairs, I turned on the light and closed the door, hoping no one would come up and ask what I was doing there. Not that anyone would. Sally wasn’t working today either.
I looked around the room, glad for Evelyn’s company. “Here we are. Where shall we start?”
Evelyn leaned against one of the three desks, their surfaces all laden with cartons of books. “I believe these desks were here before the attic became a catchall for discarded copies of books. And there are the chairs.” She pointed to the far corner.
“Uh-huh.” Where was this leading?
“The desks have drawers. I think you should go through them,” Evelyn said.
“Well, okay. But I doubt Laura would put something personal in a desk drawer any member of the staff might open.”
“True, but things have gotten shifted around here in the past fifteen years. It’s worth a look.”
I opened the narrow top drawer of the desk closest to me. It was filled with candy wrappers, paper clips, a few ballpoint pens, and rubber bands. There were two side drawers. The first held typing paper and forms that the library no longer used. A white cardigan was in the bottom drawer.
“No luck, I see,” Evelyn said. “But there are two more desks.”
They stood against the far wall, with dozens of piled-up cartons blocking immediate access.
Evelyn must have seen me hesitate, because she cast me a stern look. “They’re worth investigating.”
I moved the boxes impeding my path to the desks. After fifteen minutes of hard work—my hands filthy with dust—I reached the first desk.
“Nothing here.” I opened the three drawers.
“One more to go,” Evelyn said.
The drawers were empty, save for a pad of notepaper and a box of paper clips. Then I had an idea. “I’m going to look underneath and behind the desks, just in case Laura hid the papers there.”
“That’s the spirit!” Evelyn perched on top of a pile of cartons.
I examined the two desks carefully. I pulled out every drawer to see if there was anything glued to the desk’s frame.
“Nothing,” I reported.
“Don’t forget the first desk,” Evelyn advised.
“Of course not.”
I moved the necessary boxes to retrace my steps and examined the first desk’s underside. I pulled out the top drawer, found nothing. Same for the second drawer. But the third drawer that held the sweater seemed to be stuck. I yanked on the handle until the drawer came out. I saw nothing on the desk frame. I felt under the drawer and yelped as I detached a brown envelope taped to the bottom of the drawer.
“Evelyn, look!”
My fingers trembled as I unfastened the metal clasp. Inside were ten or twelve sheets of yellow legal-sized pages filled with a scrawling feminine hand.