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RILEY FINCH SAT AT her kitchen table, staring at her eraser and a soft brush. She ran a gloved finger down the open page of the journal, holding her phone over the page with her other hand. Snap. Snap. These pictures would document her work, should she ever show off her restoration efforts. “After.”
“After what?”
Riley scrambled to save her phone from falling. “Lucy! I didn’t hear you.” She masked the alarm in her voice with a giggle. “Why are you sneaking up on me?” Hoping she’d sounded lighthearted, she swept the tools into a zippered pouch.
“Not sneaking. It’s seven and I’m usually home now.” Her older sister dropped into the chair beside Riley. “What are you doing?”
“Work.” Riley stole a glance at the table. “Or no. A book.”
“From work?” Lucy raised her eyebrow at Riley’s gloved hands. “They let you take it home?”
Riley felt the colour rise to her cheeks. “It’s just a journal. I’m...” She considered her words. “I’m practising restoration.”
Lucy smiled. “Like the project you worked on last semester?” She reached for the journal. “Let me see.”
Riley moved the book out of her sister’s reach and closed it. “It’s nothing,” she mumbled as she slid the book into her bag. “How was your day?”
Lucy recounted a story involving a customer at the boutique she managed. “But tell me about your day. Are you enjoying the job?”
Riley lowered her head. What could she share about finding the journal? She’d written in it, accidentally. She’d taken it, not accidentally. Better to say nothing so Lucy didn’t have to keep a secret and Riley didn’t have to lie. “Yeah, the job’s great. Claire supports me.” She combed her fingers through her hair and avoided looking at her bag. “What’s going on at the boutique?”
Riley listened to her sister explain a new fashion trend. She pushed the journal from her mind and silently thanked her older sister for being so easy to distract.
RILEY KICKED OFF HER covers. She couldn’t find a position comfortable enough to fall asleep, so she wrapped herself in a bulky sweater and padded out of her room with her work bag clutched to her chest. She wiggled her fingers under the bag’s flap, brushing the soft leather of the journal tucked inside.
Riley nestled into the reading nook. She and Lucy had created it one rainy afternoon using a comfy chair and the bookshelves their mother had left behind in the apartment when she’d moved to Vancouver Island following their father’s death. Lucy had sewn a new cover for the chair while Riley painted the shelves. The memory was bittersweet—the sisters laughing and sharing stories about their dad.
Fortune had smiled on Riley’s parents when they bought the unit in a new low-rise before the city’s real estate market exploded out of reach for most. After living in the suburbs for their working lives, they enjoyed downtown living for a year until Leo Finch’s heart had failed him. Nancy couldn’t bear to live in the space without her husband, choosing to rent the unit to her daughters and move to Vancouver Island. The distance cushioned the memories the city held. “The apartment was always going to be left to you girls. You might as well enjoy it now,” she’d said when her daughters had encouraged her to sell and find a smaller space.
Leo had passed his love of books to his youngest daughter, and Riley embraced his mantra that she would never be lonely if she had something to read. She shivered, imagining the former librarian learning that his daughter had fouled the pages of a book she found at the archive. Would his disappointment be deep enough to reach her from the afterlife?
She took a deep breath, turning to the page she had marked in the archive. In the city’s glow filtering through the windows, there was no longer any sign of her mistake. She reread the last few entries in the journal, scratching her nose as she read the final passage. Riley was certain it had not been there when she put the journal away before going to bed.
Huntington ordered the gloves for a delicate hand. We both knew hers was not. I assume by bringing them to me, she wishes for me to discover the true intended recipient. I appreciate both the additional information and how difficult it must have been for her to bring it to me.
Riley tapped the journal’s side with her pencil. She dropped it and stared at her hand. When had she underlined part of the new passage? A wave of nausea rippled from deep within her stomach, and she drew the sweater tight around her and hunched forward. Now she had to keep the journal longer so she could remove these new marks. Later—when she had fresher eyes, more focus.
She scrambled to check her phone for the photo of her earlier restoration. The final entry did not appear. She tried to recreate the image, snapping photos from different angles, unable to find the angle that obscured the words.
How had the new passage appeared? Did slow-appearing ink exist? Riley’s heart thumped. What if the journal wasn’t a prank? Then what was it?
And if it wasn’t a prank, could she somehow read Detective Winston’s most recent entry? Was she seeing things? On shaky legs, she climbed back into bed, the possibilities churning in her thoughts.