then he began to cry harder, more ardently, as though his own desperation had been fully revealed. And maybe it was that he lost his resolve in the momentary chaos of emotion, but he didn’t put up any struggle at all when Suzy lifted him—a limby, dragging bundle—out of the truck and carried him toward her own idling vehicle. She kept a hand on Squee’s head and craned around to Roddy, mouthing words he couldn’t make out.
“SHERIFF, GOOD MORNING.” Eden opened the door as though Sheriff Harty paid her a visit every day.
The sheriff tugged off his hat and clutched it to him as he shifted in Eden’s doorway. “Eden, how are you?” He replaced his hat.
“Oh,” Eden said, “under the circumstances . . .”
“You busy this morning? I wonder if I could talk with you. Is it a bad time, Eden?”
“Coffee, Sheriff?” she said by way of invitation, and held the door as he entered.
“Oh,” he said, “sure, thanks, if it’s not too much trouble. Haven’t got much sleep . . .”
Eden went to the kitchen. The sheriff stood awkwardly, then strolled around the living room, inspected Roderick’s gun collection, and finally took a seat in the least comfortable-looking chair in the room.
“Eden,” he began when they were settled, “I’m not meaning to be like some detective about this, but I’m no good at the sensitive stuff and I’ve got sensitive stuff I got to talk about and I know you’re not one to stand on ceremony or beat around the bush so I’m just going to tell you what I’ve got to tell you and say what I’ve got to say and ask you what I got to ask you, and then we’ll just take it from there, OK?”
“You go right ahead, Duane.”
The large envelope he was carrying opened with a crack of Velcro. “There’s something we found at the scene of the fire . . .”—he looked up to make sure Eden was following him—“and it’s probably not exactly one hundred percent police protocol for me to be here like this . . .” He paused. “Well, no, actually it probably is—it’s just, I’m not asking anything in a real official-type way. But here: there was a small refrigerator in the laundry shack—not in operation, but used as a kind of a storage cabinet—totally against the law, and thank god we didn’t have some kid get themselves trapped in there in a game of hide-and-seek—I can only imagine . . . So, but, well, the contents of that fridge survived the fire real well—mostly just junk, but also something else we found, and it’s only been seen now by Deputy Mitchell and myself and we’re both of us tied in knots about what to do and so we decided I’d come and talk to you, on account it seems by the contents of the thing that you’re perhaps familiar with the contents—some, at least, already, and so I guess . . .” From the envelope he removed the thin lavender spiral notebook that had served as Lorna Squire’s diary. “We’ve got this thing,” said the sheriff, “and we don’t know what the hell to do with it.” He passed the book to Eden.
The sheriff, wiped out by this delivery, sank against his stiff-backed chair, then remembered his coffee and seized the cup as if it held the key to his survival.
Eden held the notebook, the warped metal curls of its binding like the spine of a small animal. On the cover, the ballpoint letters traced over so many times they were nearly engraved, it read: THE DIARY OF LORNA MARIE VAUGHN SQUIRE.
“Duane”—Eden looked the sheriff in the eye—“why’re you showing this to me?”
The sheriff set down his cup. “Like I said, Eden, or tried to . . . There’s mention of you all over in there—says right on the first page you’re the one suggested she write down her thoughts in the first place. Back when it starts at first she writes the date in—late ’seventynine is it?—then it just kind of drops off. It’s right there on the first page . . .”
Eden opened the cover. Nov. 23, 1979. Right when Lorna was pregnant with Squee. Eden flipped the page. The initial entries were dated, then devolved into July . . . ? Until they disappeared altogether. The notebook was maybe three quarters full, and most of it seemed to be letters of a sort. Dear Diary had given way to Dear Squee, and then later