Sometimes I think I didn’t find Abigail Boyles at all; she found me. I have this crazy idea that if I asked her how long she’d been searching for a writer to breathe new life into the story of a young colonial woman wrongfully accused of witchcraft and sentenced to die, her answer would be, “All my life.”
Abigail had been waiting for me, for someone to tell Mercy Hayworth’s story. It was a story meant to be told.
I met Abigail after I returned to UC Santa Barbara from a long summer at my parents’ home in Pacific Palisades, fresh from the lap of luxury and itching to be like the other sophomores in my dorm. Abigail’s job posting, skewered to the English department bulletin board along with half a dozen other openings, was the only handwritten notice. The fontlike precision of her script caught my eye. The personal touch drew me.
I had just decided that day to end my dependence on Dad’s monthly stipend for my living expenses, though it was something that had gnawed at me all through my freshman year. I had a vat of money I could dip my hand into any time I wanted. I’d always had it. My roommate Clarissa worked in the college bookstore and at a coffee shop, sneaking in study time whenever she could. I hardly ever saw her. I don’t know that she resented my unlimited debit card, as she never said anything about it. Maybe that’s what bugged me the most. That she never said anything.
Abigail had written her notice on lavender stationery using a black, felt-tipped pen. The W in her Wanted—Literary Assistant was perfectly formed, just the right amount of arc and sweep. Abigail’s posting had a slightly faded patina, and it wasn’t dated—that should have been a clue. It was surrounded by job postings printed on ink jet printers and bearing informational tabs torn off here and there by hurried hands.
Hers was the only notice that bore the unseen fingerprints of human touch: lavender paper meant for a personal note and words penned with a steady hand. There was no mention of Mercy’s diary, just these lines and a phone number: Wanted—Literary Assistant for transcription project. Ten hours a week for four months. Eleven dollars per hour. Prefer someone with knowledge of seventeenth-century literature.
It was the word literature that made me write down Abigail’s phone number. The other postings were for research assistants, copyeditors, proofers, and writing mentors. That, and the humanity of the posting itself: the artistic W and the unspoken knowledge that this technologically bereft employer had a project different from everyone else’s.
A classmate, Lira, walked by as I was writing down Abigail’s phone number on a Starbucks receipt I’d found in my backpack.
“You looking for a job?”
There was nothing unkind in the way she said it, but I felt my cheeks grow warm nonetheless. I’d had enough short conversations with Lira to know she was paying her own way through college. And she knew what most of my college acquaintances had been able to pick up, though I had made no conscious effort to convey it: my parents were wealthy.
“Urn. Yeah.”
Lira, a journalism major, leaned in to look at Abigail’s lavender paper. My guess is she wanted to see what kind of job appealed to someone who didn’t need one.
“Hmm,” she said. “What do you suppose that’s about?” It was clear Lira had no interest at all in a posting like Abigail’s. If anything, she distrusted it.
I feigned casual curiosity. “Could be interesting.” I shrugged and clicked my pen closed.
“This one looks good.” Lira pointed to a mauve-and-taupe-colored flier for a copywriting internship at an ad agency. Half its phone tabs had been yanked off.
I could tell Lira meant well. I know now that it was a joke among the students in the English department how long the handwritten ad had been posted, and that many English majors had in desperation called Abigail and either declined her strange job offer or failed to impress her.
But I didn’t know this yet.
“I’m going to give this one a try.” I nodded toward Abigail’s posting. “Can’t hurt.”
Lira readjusted her book bag on her shoulder and smiled. “Well, I hope it works out.” Her eyes, kind but discerning, told me that if someone needed a job for income and résumé-building, they would’ve torn off one of the ad agency’s tabs. But if a rich girl just wanted a little diversion for a few hours a week and the money itself didn’t matter, well, here was the perfect match.
We said good-bye and she walked away.
I wondered all that afternoon if she was right: that I wasn’t looking for a job because I needed the satisfaction of earning my own money. I needed something else.
Back in my dorm room, I called the number. A woman with a gentle Spanish accent answered the phone and told me she needed to ask me a few questions before setting up an interview with Miss Boyles. In the background I heard her fiddling with papers.
“What is your major?” she asked.
“English with a concentration in Literature and Cultures of Information.”
“And your year in college?”
I figured this was a sly way to guess my age. I answered anyway. “Sophomore.”
“And where did you earn your high school diploma?”
This, I learned later, was to see where I was from, where I grew up, where I had learned how unfair the world can be.
“Palisades Point Academy.” I had to repeat that, too.
“Can you wait a moment?” the woman asked. She put me on hold before I could answer but was back within a minute.
“Miss Boyles would like to know if you can come for an interview on Thursday. Five o’clock?”
“Uh. Well, yes.”
“Okay. You have a pen? I give you the address.”
I didn’t recognize the street. It sounded like the address of a residence rather than an office. Abigail’s home.
“Just ring the bell at the gate. I will let you in.”
A gated home. Like my parents’.
“Okay?”
“Wait,” I said. “Can I ask what I would be transcribing?”
The woman hesitated. I heard her cover the phone with her hand. She was consulting someone. “A diary. It’s three hundred years old. It belonged to an ancestor of Miss Boyles who lived during the Salem witch trials.”
The connection to Mercy Hayworth was immediate, and I hadn’t even heard her name yet. My interest instantly soared. A diary. Literature of the most intimate kind, amazingly personal and revealing. Penned during the Salem witch trials and kept for three centuries. Somehow I knew it was the diary of a woman, not a man. A woman with secrets. This resonated within me more than anything else: a diary was where secrets were recorded.
I wanted this job. I had secrets of my own.
“Okay?” the woman asked.
“Yes,” I said. Yes, yes, yes.
“Okay.” She hung up.
I stared at the address in my hand for a moment, then went to my computer and googled it. I studied the map and realized Abigail lived in an older, stately neighborhood where the moneyed families of early Santa Barbara built their mansions.
I wasn’t sure how Dad would react to my taking on a part-time job that had nothing to do with Durough enterprises, but I knew he would approve of this: my prospective employer lived the kind of life he was familiar with and trusted.
I waited until after I knew my parents had eaten dinner to call my dad and tell him he no longer needed to deposit the spending allowance in my checking account. I practiced saying it a couple times before I called so I would sound calm and confident, like it was the most natural thing in the world to earn my own money.
He took the news better than he had taken my other decisions that made no sense to him, like choosing Santa Barbara instead of Stanford and majoring in something other than economics. Dad was slightly amused, a bit perturbed, but subtly proud of me for doing—albeit without grace—what all Duroughs of the past had done: made things happen instead of let things happen.
I wanted to earn my own money. I was making a business decision. He liked it.
My father does not control by domination; he controls by persuasion. There is a huge difference. I have never felt ignorant or inferior around him, only the pull to conform. It’s a very strong pull. My father possesses a keen ability to make people do what he wants them to do. Couple that with his good looks, calm demeanor, and disarming confidence, and it’s no wonder I tremble at the thought of disagreeing with him. I’d won the battle of where to get my undergraduate degree, but I doubted he would concede anything else.
When I told him about the job, I could almost hear him thinking, This will be good for Lauren. She’ll come to see success lies on just one road. The Durough road.
He wanted to know the details.
“So it’s hourly?”
“Yes.”
“How much?” he asked, even though we both knew it didn’t matter.
“Eleven,” I said as confidently as I could. I knew his gardener’s assistant made more plucking snails out of the Durough flower beds.
“And you’ll be doing what, exactly?”
“Transcribing a diary.”
“Well, that’s different. What kind of diary? Whose is it?”
“It belonged to someone who lived three hundred years ago. I think it’ll be very interesting.”
He paused for a moment. “You know you could do consulting work for me online for a few hours a week, Lauren. I told you that a long time ago.”
Yes, I knew. “I just want to try doing something on my own.”
“Well, if you really want to do this, I won’t tell you not to.”
I refrained from telling him I was not asking for his permission.
“And if you’re set on earning your own spending money, I can appreciate that. I can even get behind that,” he continued.
I cringed. The words “spending money” put my experiment instantly and squarely into perspective. It was clear to us both that I was still wholly dependent on his wealth for everything else. He didn’t mean to sound condescending. He meant to remind me of the big world that awaited me—his world. My little project was just that: little.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Good luck with your interview.”
“Mom wants to say hello.”
“Okay.”
“Let us know how this works out, okay? I’d like to hear more about it sometime.”
“Sure. Bye.”
I heard the phone being passed from one hand to another. I raised my free hand to my face to rub away the warm hues of humiliation.
“Lauren! You’re getting a job?” My mother didn’t sound alarmed or annoyed. Just surprised.
“Just a few hours a week, Mom. And I may not even get the job. The interview’s tomorrow.”
“Well, I’m sure if you’re being interviewed, you’ll get it,” she said, as only a mother can. Then, as if to prove she had no doubt I would get the job if I wanted it, she moved on. She reminded me that my Uncle Loring’s fiftieth birthday party had been moved up a week. She’d told me several days earlier that the two-day affair was now being held in two weeks instead of three because Uncle Loring had to go to Singapore. I told her I’d be there.
I don’t think Mom thought I had forgotten. She just wanted to remind me where I belonged.