The professor’s message was short and to the point. He’d learned from my roommate that I was working on the transcript of a diary written during the Salem witch trials. Clarissa had told him the diary’s author was one of the women accused of witchcraft. He would very much like to talk to me about my work.
That’s what he called it—my work.
Professor Turrell gave me his home phone number and e-mail address in addition to his number and e-mail on campus.
He sounded interested. He also sounded unconvinced the work I was doing was authentic. There was something in his tone that made me nervous. I didn’t want to talk to him. Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
I drove to the dorm and made a mental list of all the reasons I could postpone calling him back.
I hadn’t read the whole diary yet, so my “work” was incomplete at the moment.
I should ask Abigail’s permission before speaking about the diary to a man writing a book. Even if he was a college professor.
I had no insights on how the Salem witch trials affected the colonists’ economy.
I owed this man nothing.
My cell phone trilled as I composed the list. I reached for it with one hand while driving with the other. It was my mother.
“Didn’t you get Dad’s message?” she asked when I answered. No hello. No how are you. She sounded agitated.
“Sorry, Mom. I was working. I just got off.”
“Well, he’s been waiting all afternoon for you to call him back.” She sounded on the verge of tears.
From somewhere behind her, I heard my dad say, “Julia, just give me the phone. It’s not that big a deal.”
“Yes. Yes, it is. It is a big deal.” My mother began to cry. I negotiated a turn with one hand while trying to cradle the phone in the crook of my neck.
“Mom, what’s going on?” I grabbed at the wheel as I swung wide, nearly hitting the curb.
“I knew something like this would happen. I knew it.” Mom wasn’t into theatrics, but something had her shaking with dread. And she wasn’t talking to me anymore.
“Mom, please!” On impulse, I pulled into a grocery store parking lot and took the first available spot.
“Just let me have the phone, Jules.” My dad’s voice was near hers. I heard the phone exchanged from hand to another.
“Lauren.”
“Dad! What’s going on? What happened?”
“Nothing’s happened. I just have to have surgery.”
“Tell me,” I said, hardly aware of having said those words, that way.
“I’ve got three blocked arteries. The doctors want to do a bypass. They told me it can’t wait.”
A wave of alarm sliced through me. For a brief moment, I saw Mercy weeping over the body of her dead father. I tossed the unwanted image from my mind.
“Dad,” I finally managed to say, “when did all this happen?”
“Over the last fifty-two years.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. This has been waiting to happen for fifty-two years. It doesn’t matter that I’m at the gym four days a week. It’s just the way I’m wired, apparently.”
I was still trying to process the idea that my father was ill. I couldn’t wrap my brain around the thought. I had never known my dad to be sick. He got the occasional cold or sore throat, but he never spent a day at home in bed. It’d been years since he’d seen a doctor.
“When did you find out?”
“Today. I’d been feeling kind of crappy. Your mom made me make an appointment. I put it off as long as I could, so she’s mad at me, of course.”
“When are you having surgery?”
“Tuesday.”
In five days.
“Do you want me to come?” I asked.
“On Tuesday? Your mother would probably appreciate it.”
“I mean now.”
“You don’t have to come now. I’m going to have a very boring weekend sitting at home and trying not to take care of things at the office. Don’t come for me, not this weekend. I wouldn’t mind seeing you on Tuesday, though. I wouldn’t mind that at all.”
There was an inflection in his voice I hadn’t heard before. He sounded afraid.
“I’ll be there.”
A moment of silence passed between us. Neither of us seemed to know how to segue into another topic following that one.
“Got a big weekend planned?” he finally asked.
“Abigail’s going out of town. She left me the key to her place so I can work on the diary as much as I want. I’m almost finished.”
“Still haven’t convinced her to get it published, eh?”
“I think she needs to see it finished before she decides. I think there’s something about how it ends that makes her unsure what to do.”
“But I thought you knew how it ends. The girl gets hanged, right?”
“So?”
“I don’t know, Dad. But I’ll finish it this weekend, I think, and then maybe I’ll know.”
“Then, by all means, stay and finish it. When I see you on Tuesday, you can tell me all about it.”
“Okay, Dad.”
“Hey. Maybe I’d like to read it.”
“Maybe.”
“Think she’d let me?”
“No, actually. Not yet.”
“Why not?”
In that little niche of time, while I sat in my car and talked to my dad, I saw for the first time that I was part of—for lack of a better title—a trinity of mortals. Me, Abigail, and Mercy. Until the diary was done, until I understood whatever it was that Abigail wanted me to understand, there would just be the three of us. Three women. Three daughters. Three searching hearts. Three destinies to be forged.
Just us three.
“Because it’s too soon,” I said.
My father said nothing for a moment.
“Well, when it’s published, I’ll read it,” he said finally. “She won’t be able to stop me then.”
“If.”
“When.”
My mother asked for the phone back, so we said our good-byes. Mom asked me when I was coming, and I told her I’d be there Tuesday. She told me to drive carefully and to go to bed. I sounded tired.
But when I got back to the dorm a few minutes later, I didn’t feel tired.
I felt alone. Completely isolated. I was in a circle of three that somehow cut me off from everyone and everything, even my father’s illness. Though it shamed me to admit it, I was relieved my dad didn’t want me to come that weekend, that I would be able to finish the diary after all. Yet within the sense of relief was a thin layer of despondency. I would have been glad for Clarissa’s silent company just to shake the chill of such strange solitude.
But she was gone, of course, and my room was tomb-like. I had no desire to go to the library or a coffee shop or anywhere else I would be with people but still alone.
I didn’t want to be like Abigail who had no one or Mercy who had everything taken from her, including love.
I didn’t want to wind up like either of them.
So I did something spontaneous and not like me at all.
I powered up my laptop, opened my e-mail inbox, and clicked on Raul’s address.
My heart rate quickened as I began to type.
Hey, Raul:
Sorry to bother you. Just got some somewhat scary news from home and felt like telling someone. My dad has to have open-heart surgery on Tuesday. He makes it seem like it’s a simple thing, like getting your wisdom teeth pulled, but I’m afraid for him. And for me. And my mom.
Hope you don’t mind me dumping on you. Clarissa’s not here and I just found out.
Been busy with school stuff and the diary. I’ve almost finished it. Such a sad story.
Hope you’re having a good week.
Lauren
I read it twice, then changed “Lauren” to “Lars” and sent it. And immediately wished I hadn’t.
I sat there for several long moments, looking at my screen, wondering why I had done such a rash and irretrievable thing. I stood up, kicked off my shoes, and yanked my pajamas out of my dresser drawer. I was standing in my underwear when my computer chimed, letting me know I had a new e-mail message.
In near slow motion, I walked over to my laptop and peeked at the screen.
Raul had e-mailed me back.
Hey, Lars.
Good to hear from you. Sorry to hear about your dad. If it makes you feel any better, the stats are on your dads side. I’m in the cardiovascular program here at Stanford, and I’m studying what doctors can do now with open-heart surgery. It’s not as bad as it used to be. I’m sure your dad has a good doctor and will come through okay.
But my prayers will be with you and your family nonetheless. Let me know how it goes.
What will you do when you finish the diary?
Take care,
Raul
Cole hadn’t told me his rich friend was going to be a doctor.
I didn’t reply.
I didn’t know what I’d do when I finished the diary.