Daisy turned the page, realizing as she did so that she had been holding her breath. The next page was blank. She flipped through the rest of the pages in Trudy’s diary, but there were no more entries. She should have been more careful with the diary and turned the pages with deliberate slowness, but she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling of dread that had slipped over her like a shroud. She was desperate to find more words, some kind of confirmation that Trudy and the children were all right.
But there were no more words, no such confirmation. Had she just read the last words Trudy ever wrote?
Daisy sat in silence for a long time, she didn’t know how long, lost in thought and unspeakably worried about Trudy’s fate. She finally reached for a pad of paper and a pencil she kept on the coffee table, then made a list of the places she could look to learn what happened to Trudy.
Genealogy records
Census records
Newspapers
Brian- any more diaries?
She would start tomorrow morning, first thing. She had to find out what happened to Trudy.
She was in Mark John’s office the next morning before anyone else was at work. Even Jude wasn’t around.
“I finished the diary last night,” she said, sitting down across from him.
He wasn’t paying much attention. “Oh, really?” he asked, his eyes scanning the computer screen in front of him.
“I came to tell you how it ends.”
“Mm? How does it end?”
“With a cliffhanger.”
He looked at her, his attention finally drawn away from the computer. “Cliffhanger how?”
“It just ends with Trudy being afraid of her husband. He’s coming toward the house and it just ends.”
“That’s it? Kind of boring.”
“Don’t you want to know what happened?”
“I don’t really care,” he answered, looking back at the computer and pushing a few buttons.
Daisy let out an annoyed sigh. “Well, I do. I’m going to do some research to see if I can find out whatever happened to her.”
“Knock yourself out,” he said.
“What?” she asked. She was surprised to hear him speak so flippantly.
He closed his eyes. It looked like he was counting silently to ten. Then turned his full attention to her. “I’m sorry, Daisy. I have a lot on my mind this morning. I shouldn’t have been so thoughtless about the diary. You know, it might make a great story if you could find out what happened to her. If it’s that interesting, maybe you could do a separate story about it for the journal. Separate from the women’s history articles, I mean.”
Daisy nodded. “Maybe. Let me see what I can find before we go planning any more stories about it.”