Never Look Back. Robert Ross
built into the wall, if that’s not too hard to do, and then I figured I could put my desk here.”
He knelt down. “Okay, good thinking. There’s a couple of outlets here—when they wired the house I guess they thought someone might use the attic for something other than storage.” He began testing the floor-boards. “Solid over here too—no signs of rot or anything.” He stood up. “And we’ll need to do some painting, obviously. Lucky for you, darlin’, I come cheap. Ask anybody in town what a cheap floozy I am.”
She laughed as he pulled out a tape measure and started marking off the walls and making notes. “You know, Bobbie, it’s just so, so—”
“So hard to think Zsa Zsa and I are the same person?” He grinned at her and wiggled his eyebrows. “Girlfriend, that happens all the time.” He started tapping on the walls. “Solid, solid—hey, what’s this?” He tapped again, and this time she heard the difference. “Sounds hollow here. Weird. Do you have any tools handy?”
“I don’t know.” She looked around and spotted a rusty toolbox covered in dust. “What do you need?”
“A hammer, if you’ve got one.”
She opened the toolbox and pulled one out and handed it to him. “Here you go.”
He slipped the claw handle into a crack between the boards and started twisting. After a few moments of struggling, with a groan the board came loose. “Hello, what do we have here?”
Karen stepped over to the hole in the wall. There was a dark space behind it. “What’s this?”
“A hiding place.” Bobbie grinned at her. “Maybe there’s a lost treasure in here.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think so.”
“Hey, you never know. See—there’s something in here.” Bobbie reached in and pulled out a dusty book. “Looks like a ledger of some sort.”
Karen grabbed it out of his hands and carried it over to the light. She opened it to the flyleaf.
Property of Letitia Hatch, 1922.
“Oh my God,” she breathed, turning to the first page. “It’s Lettie Hatch’s diary.”
12 August 1922
He wants me to call her Mother! As though Mother never existed! I’d rather die!
I HATE HER!!!
The last sentence was underlined three times.
“August twelfth, 1922,” Bobbie read over her shoulder. “Almost to the day…”
“What do you mean?” Karen closed the book.
“Today’s the sixteenth.”
Karen nodded. “Which would mean…that I arrived here on exactly the same day Sarah Jane arrived here in 1922.”
Bobbie hummed The Twilight Zone theme. “Weird…”
Karen sat down on a rusted old iron chair. “Wow. Lettie Hatch’s diary. What do you think we should do with it?”
He shrugged. “Probably should take it over to the Historical Society, I would think. I imagine some historians would be really interested in it.” He lowered his voice. “Do you think…” He paused, and theatrically looked over his shoulder. “That she talks about the murders in there?”
Karen flipped to the back of the book. The pages were brittle, yellowed with age, and the ends crumbled a bit as she touched them. “What was the date of the murders?”
“I don’t know, offhand, but I think it was in December.” He tapped his forehead with the index finger of his right hand. “I mean, it’s not like we have a town holiday or anything on the anniversary.”
“The last entry in here is dated December third.” She closed the book and clutched it to her chest.
Lettie Hatch’s diary—and no one has ever seen it before.
She let out a breath. Forget the Vicky mystery. This was a gold mine! She could write a book about the Hatch murders—and she would have access to information that no one else ever had before!
“What are you thinking?” Bobbie asked. “You look like Lucy Ricardo when she’s cooking up some scheme to get into Ricky’s show.”
“Bobbie, think about it.” She got up and started pacing, clutching the book tighter.
“I am thinking about it, honey, and you may be on to something if you’re thinking what I’m thinking.”
“I am.” She beamed. “This is a major find. How much interest do you think there’d be in this diary?”
“Oprah kind of interest, darlin’, Larry King Live.”
“Yeah,” she breathed. “Can you think of a better hook for a book about the Hatch murders? I live in her house! I have her diary—which no one has ever seen.”
“Sweetie darling, you haven’t even looked to see if she writes about the murders yet….”
“I know, I know….” She began flipping through the pages.
Bobbie laughed. “And to think—I knew you when.” He gave her a mock bow. “Please don’t forget the little people when you’re world famous, Karen.”
“I’m going to read this cover to cover.”
“Okay, Ms. Soon-to-be Superstar, I’ll get out of your hair. I’ll do an estimate on this and bring it back by later. But you have to promise me one thing.”
“What’s that?”
He tapped the diary. “You have to tell me what that thing says. After all, I found it for you.”
“I will, but you can’t breathe a word of this yet, Bobbie. You can’t tell anyone. Swear?”
“I swear.” He gave her a kiss on the cheek. “All right, all right, I’m going. I know when I’m not wanted or needed anymore. If you want me to find any more treasures in your walls, just holler.” He bowed again at the top of the stairs, and then went down.
Karen opened the book again, her fingers trembling. She stared at the words on the first page again.
Who were you, Lettie Hatch?
She traced the underlined words with her finger.
I HATE HER!!!
She took a deep breath and turned the page.
August 23
Mrs. Windham doesn’t like her either. She hasn’t said anything, but I can tell. She gets that sour look on her face whenever she says her name, the same one she uses when I don’t get my lessons right—the one that looks like she’s smelled something bad. She just sneers at her. She will not say anything bad to me about her—she knows her place—but I can tell she would just as soon slap her face than speak to her.
Oh! How could you, Father? How could you forget yourself, forget Mother—and marry this woman? I know that men have needs, and Mother has been gone for two years, but why this woman? How people in Washington must be laughing…just as the people in Boston and here in Provincetown will be when they meet her. We will be the subject of so much malicious gossip—oh, it isn’t to be borne!
And why did I know nothing of this until now? The talk from Mother’s death has finally seemed to die down…although the other youths in town still are cruel. Just two days ago that monster Abby Winston called me “ghost-girl” to my face…as God is my witness, someday she will pay for her slights and cruelties. But I know in my heart of hearts it is my fault—I should have simply kept my mouth shut and borne my burden alone rather than trying to get sympathy from the small-minded.
Dinner last night was horrible. Mrs. Windham made cold crab salad—Father’s