“People do get appendix attacks, Momma.”
Cathy had tears of fear in her eyes.
“Now, now,” Daddy told her, embracing her quickly. “You won’t have an appendix attack.” He gave me a look that said, Be careful, Christopher. She’s just a little girl.
I nodded.
He was right. I had to control my tongue and think harder first before I spoke.
Doctors especially have to know how to do that. You have to learn to keep certain things secret for the patient’s own benefit.
I heard my father call to me.
I put the diary aside and hurried down for the lunch he was preparing. All I could think of was to eat and get back up there to continue reading. My father had our sandwiches out and a jug of water and glasses.
“Thanks, Dad,” I said, slipping into my chair. He looked at me and sat. “What?” I asked before I took a bite. I could always tell when he had something on his mind.
“You didn’t call any of your friends yet about that diary, did you?”
“No. I thought I’d read it first.”
“Good. I don’t want you to tell anyone about it for a while. Maybe never.” He bit into his sandwich, and I bit into mine.
“Why not?” I couldn’t imagine he had the same reason I did for keeping it to myself.
“For now, I don’t want to broadcast that we found that. All I need is for this new prospective buyer to get second thoughts like so many others have over the years since the second fire. I don’t want to perpetuate any of those Halloween stories. The bank wouldn’t be happy with me. And the bank could confiscate that diary. Technically, they own everything on the property.”
“Okay. It’s our secret . . . and Todd’s.”
“Todd doesn’t know what you found. He was too disappointed that it wasn’t jewelry or money. I’m sure he’s forgotten it was anything else by now.”
“What if Christopher tells us in the diary where his little brother was buried or something?”
My father stopped eating. “What?”
“It could be in there is all I’m saying. I’m not saying I read it yet. He did write early in the pages that his little brother suffered a horrible death.”
“How horrible? What does he say happened to him?”
“I don’t know yet, Dad. Maybe he really was poisoned; maybe it was something worse.”
He sat back. I could see I already had revealed too much, but as my mother often said, “Words are like toothpaste. Once they come out, you can’t put them back in.”
“I don’t like this. Now you’re scaring me. You gonna go and have nightmares after this?”
“I don’t have nightmares. Stop being a worrywart,” I said, which was another one of his own expressions. I asked my English teacher what it meant, and he told me with a shrug that it just meant someone who worried so much he caused others to do the same. “It’s just . . . a diary.”
“A diary written by a kid kept locked up in an attic of a nuthouse for more than three years,” Dad said. “Madness is madness no matter how you cut it. Maybe he’s making it all up, including the way his brother died.”
“I’m not going to go crazy reading it, Dad. Will you stop?”
“You let me know when you’re finished with it.”
“Why? Will you burn it or something?”
“Just let me know, and don’t ask so many questions, or I’ll take away your what, who, where, why, and how.”
We stared at each other a moment, and then we both smiled. The world I was about to enter through this diary was so unlike mine. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how a grandmother would so harm her own grandchildren, but I was just beginning the diary. It wouldn’t be long before I would find out the truth.