“No one really knows what these kids suffered up there,” Kane said with disgust when he stopped reading. “I mean, all I’ve ever heard or read was that they were locked away for some time, but how they were treated by their own damn family, the crap they went through, these details . . . it makes me want to throw up.”
“Horrible,” I said. He looked lost in thought. I glanced at my watch. “We’d better go down. It’s getting late, and I have some things I have to do before my father gets home.”
He really looked upset enough not to argue about reading a little longer. He nodded, and we organized the attic again. It didn’t take long. We hadn’t moved much this time. We didn’t even open the windows for a little fresh air, because Kane had been so eager to start. He followed me down to my room, and I slipped the diary under my pillow.
“Don’t you have a better place to hide it?” he asked. “I mean, if we should lose it now, I think I’d go bonkers not having reached the end.”
“It’s as safe as anywhere there. We don’t have a maid,” I said. “I make my own bed, clean my own room.”
“I wasn’t thinking of that,” he said, lowering his gaze to avoid mine.
“Despite how he feels about it, my father would never take it away,” I told him. In the beginning, I wasn’t so confident, but I was now, now that my father had seen how important it was to me. I wasn’t surprised that Kane was skeptical about it, though. His parents would probably break promises as easily as bending straws. “Trust me, Kane.”
“Okay.”
We went downstairs. He paused at the door, and I could see something else was bothering him. Even though he was looking right at me, he wasn’t seeing me. He was too deep in thought. “What are you thinking?” I asked.
“I was wondering . . .”
“What?” I followed quickly when he looked like he was about to change his mind about telling me.
“I hope you don’t think less of me because of what I told you up there about my mother, the reason she became pregnant, all of that.”
“Why would I think less of you? You didn’t do anything wrong. If anything, you’re the victim. I think less of your mother and father. I’ll say that. I’d even tell them.”
He smiled. “I bet you would.” He kissed me. It was a thank-you kiss, quick, but a little static electricity snapped, and we both laughed. “I’m a shocking guy,” he said.
Just as I opened the door, the house phone rang. “Maybe it’s my father,” I said.
Kane waited while I went to the phone. It wasn’t my father. It was my aunt Barbara.
“Everything’s changed. I feel very good,” she said. “I’m coming for Thanksgiving. I’ll stay until Saturday.”
“That’s wonderful, Aunt Barbara.”
I copied down her flight number and arrival time and told Kane.
He could see how excited and happy I was, but he didn’t smile or look happy for me. “She’s flying in tomorrow?”
“That’s the flight she could get.”
“We probably won’t get together on Sunday,” he said mournfully.
“Oh, you can come over when she’s here.”
“I don’t mean that,” he said.
I realized what he meant. I just didn’t want to acknowledge it, to confirm that reading the diary was more important than anything else to him now, even just seeing me. For a moment, I had the crazy idea that once we had finished it, he would break up with me.
As weird as it might seem, that idea reminded me of the Arabian Nights. A Persian king, shocked to discover that his new bride was unfaithful, had her executed and then began to marry virgins, only to execute each the following day. It went on until he married Scheherazade, who began telling him a story without giving him the end. It went on and on for a thousand and one nights, because as long as she kept from revealing the ending, he didn’t execute her. Would Kane and I go on and on for our thousand and one nights and then stop when we reached the ending?
Maybe there was no ending.
“We’re not going anywhere, Kane, and neither is that diary. There’s no rush. Stop worrying.”
“Right. I just hope it doesn’t t
ake us as long to finish it as it took them to get out,” he said. Then he realized he was being too intense and laughed. “Poor joke. Sorry. Do I pick you up in the morning?”