“Okay. That sounds fair enough.”
She giggled and opened the file on the table.
I set her French toast down in front of her along with butter and syrup. I headed back over to the stove but turned around to watch her pour the syrup as she read whatever was on the paper.
“Syd, you’re going to drown my French toast. I put a lot of love into that.”
“Oh! Right. Oops. Looks like the French toast got lucky. I mean, I’d love to be slathered like that.” Her mouth dropped open. “I mean, you know, it’s like peanut butter and jelly—they just go. The jelly wants some of that peanut butter because it loves the thick, creamy, nutty goodness.” Then her eyes widened in horror before she shoved a huge bite of French toast in her mouth, cutting off further communication.
“The thick, creamy, nutty goodness?” I asked while trying not to laugh. She shoved more French toast into her mouth. I watched as she ate and read. She was the most adorable thing I had ever laid eyes on.
Maggie Maye was under the table, lying at Sydney’s feet. My dog was quickly falling in love with Syd, and something told me I wasn’t far behind.
“These are handwritten notes from Vickie that she scanned into the computer and saved on that drive. It’s like a… journal of sorts. Oh. My. Goodness!”
“What!”
She slowly shook her head. “You know that blog you found?” she asked, glancing up at me.
“Yeah?”
“That was Vickie’s blog!”
“Vickie’s?”
“Yes. Mike, the witch trials. They were a cover up.”
“I’ve already read that. A lot of people think they were used to cover up something else.”
“Yes, but Vickie found out what they were covering up.”
I quickly tossed my French toast onto a plate and rushed over to Sydney. God, I loved a good mystery.
“Okay, I think it’s safe for me to know about this.”
She smiled. “Okay, hypothetically speaking… Vickie says she received an old journal that another Truth-seeker gave her after seeing her blog. She got in her car one day, and the journal was sitting on the front seat with a note that said ‘What you thought you knew is only what they wanted you to know.’ ”
“What did she think she knew?”
She held up a finger. “Hold on. I’m getting there. From Vickie’s notes, it sounds like one of the magistrates was having inappropriate relationships with some of the young girls in Salem. One of the girls threatened to tell everyone about it. This magistrate, along with a few of the other men, came up with the idea to use the recent hysteria over witchcraft to accuse the girls of practicing it. The girls met and told their stories of
this man’s indecency, and the men used that meeting against the girls. They threatened to kill the girls’ families.”
She looked up from the laptop, and we stared at each other for a few moments. “It also says they also accused women who had no knowledge of the magistrate’s actions. They killed innocent girls to cover up one man’s disgusting atrocities.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “How did Vickie get involved with all of this?”
Sydney shrugged. “She was going to school for journalism—maybe that had something to do with it. She could have been researching a story and stumbled upon it.”