of one of the classics that her mother loved, she slid it out slowly and laid it on the desk. A thin piece of leather wrapped around a big brown button on the top kept it closed. She ran her fingers over the tooled title: Family Journal. Why hadn’t her mother ever showed it to her or even mentioned buying it?
She unwound the leather latch and opened the book. “Holy smoke! It’s not a book. It really is a journal. I wonder where Mama got it.” She opened it and started to flip through it when Holly peeked in the room.
“Mama, I hate it here. You’ve proven your point. Please take us home,” she begged. A tear slowly made its way down her cheek, showing that she was truly miserable.
Lily almost caved, but then a voice in her head reminded her to deliver what you promise. She remembered her mother saying those very words.
“But you haven’t proven your point,” Lily said. “When you’ve proven that you can be trusted, then we’ll have this discussion again. Until then, we’re staying right here.”
Holly wiped the tear away with the back of her hand and glared at her mother. “I’ll never forgive you for making me do this.” She turned around, crossed over to her room, and slammed the door.
Feeling as if she was reading something sacred, she stared at the first entry—small, neat handwriting from someone named Ophelia Smith.
June 1862, Vicksburg, Mississippi: My heart is broken. My life is in shambles and I have no idea what to do. I can run a household, but William took care of the plantation, and now he’s dead and gone. I’ve kept things going, but it hasn’t been easy. A woman doesn’t have the authority that a man does. William left six months ago to fight for the Confederacy. They brought his body home yesterday, and we buried him today. Now I have two children, a daughter, Matilda, and a son, Henry, to raise on my own. Times are hard right now, and children need a father, especially Henry, who isn’t old enough to help me run this place, and is already showing rebellious signs. I fear he’ll run off and join the fight as soon as he’s old enough. Our foreman left today, and several slaves have already run away, too. I can see nothing but disaster in the future. Our way of life is gone, but it’s all I know, so what do I do now?
Feeling as if she were peering into the window of a woman’s soul, Lily couldn’t force her eyes away from that first entry. She read it several times and thought of Braden. Evidently, there had been single mothers trying to raise children on their own for a century and a half. She carefully closed the journal, put it back in the secretary, and lifted the flap back into place. She wanted to read more, but just reading that much made her feel guilty about peeking at someone’s intimate thoughts. Besides, tomorrow was Sunday, and that meant going to church, so she couldn’t stay up reading about Ophelia’s life half the night. She got dressed for bed, turned off the light, and slipped beneath the covers.
She closed her eyes, but the words from the journal still ran through her mind. Had Ophelia and William slept in a four-poster bed like this one? Had she soaked her pillow with tears for him every night that he was gone to the war, or did she have so much to do, trying to keep her children fed and clothed, that she had no time for tears?
Lily seldom ever dreamed, and when she did, she usually woke up with every detail still fresh in her mind. The next morning, she sat up in bed, and for a split second, she was Ophelia, and Braden and Holly were Matilda and Henry. She rubbed her eyes and looked around at the room. Then she remembered who and where she was. She turned the alarm off two minutes before it was set to ring and threw back the covers.
“That was one crazy dream.” She longed to read more of the journal that morning. She felt like a moth drawn to a flame, as if she should read it from the first to the last. Maybe by the time she’d read the rest of Ophelia’s story, she’d figure out who the woman was and why Lily’s mother had the journal. Maybe Ophelia just needed someone to sympathize