Chapter 14 - The Missing Diary
That afternoon Lily remembered something she had not thought about in years.
"I used to keep a diary."
Daniel looked up.
"What happened to it?"
"I don't know."
"I wrote in it almost every night after you left."
"It disappeared when I was fourteen."
Samuel immediately became interested.
"What color was it?"
"Blue."
"It had tiny silver stars."
Daniel suddenly remembered buying it together with the teddy bear before leaving overseas.
They searched Lily's room first.
Nothing.
Then the attic.
Nothing.
Finally Daniel checked the storage room beside the garage.
Old furniture.
Broken bicycles.
Boxes filled with holiday decorations.
Near the back wall stood an antique wooden trunk covered in dust.
The lock had rusted away years earlier.
Inside were dozens of Lily's childhood belongings.
Crayons.
School certificates.
Small shoes.
Birthday cards Daniel had mailed from overseas.
Rebecca had told him every one of those gifts had been lost during a flood.
Another lie.
Lily smiled sadly while holding a faded drawing she had made at age seven.
"I thought all of this was gone."
Daniel continued searching beneath the boxes.
Then he found the diary.
Its blue cover was torn.
Several pages had been ripped out.
Most entries remained.
Lily opened the first page with trembling hands.
The cheerful handwriting of a little girl slowly transformed over the years into short, frightened sentences.
Some pages contained only dates.
Others only one line.
Today Aunt Rebecca slapped me because I asked when Dad was coming home.
Daniel closed the diary.
His hands were shaking too violently to continue reading.
But Samuel quietly reached for it.
"If pages are missing..."
May you like
"They were removed for a reason."
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