Chapter One
Don’t they realize I can hear them? Yes, I’m sick, but I’m not dead yet. How could he be so heartless? I can hear them!
India Reinhart couldn’t stand to read anymore, at least not now. Her heart was aching and she wished she had never found the diary. Wished she had never gone to the yard sale in Mission Hills last Saturday and picked up that box of autographed books. Little did she know that it also contained the diary wrapped in a piece of burgundy silk buried underneath them, this diary that now was driving her to tears.
She threw the leather-bound book with its gilded edges across the room. It hit the wall with a thud and she cringed. She hadn’t meant to do that, but the way it was making her feel she didn’t know what else to do.
Shaking, she grabbed her phone and dialed her best friend Jewel Capri’s number. Moments later Jewel answered groggily but India barely gave her a chance to say hello.
“I took your advice, Jewel. I started reading that darned thing and I really, really, really wish I hadn’t.”
She could hear Jewel catch her breath on the other end. “India? What are you talking about? Girl it better be good, calling me and waking me up at 2:00 in the morning!”
“The diary, the diary I told you I found in that box of old books. I started reading it tonight and it is breaking my heart,” India said, her voice cracking. “It seems to have belonged to a woman who may have been dying and it sounds like her husband was cheating on her – cheating right up under her nose.”
“Ooh, no wonder you are upset. That’s terrible.”
“Yes, I’m upset!”
“You know the only reason I suggested that you might want to read some of the diary India was that maybe you would find out who it belonged to, remember? To return it to them, that’s what we talked about.”
“I know, but, Jewel,” India said calming down a little. “Look, I’m sorry to wake you up like this, it’s just, well, you know.”
“Maybe you ought to just get rid of it. I don’t think I’d read anymore of it if I were you.” Jewel said softly.
India shook her head violently even though Jewel couldn’t see her, the wild cascade of tightly coiled curls whipping her face. She was shocked by how emotional she was at the moment and sorry she had called and awakened Jewel in Dallas, but they both knew that Jewel was about the only one she could talk to who would understand why the words on the page of the diary had hit her so hard.
She was only a year out of her own relationship with a lying cheating skunk and the letters in the scrawny slanted handwriting on those diary pages had been like a scalpel re-opening her own wounds.
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