Page 24 of Strangers She Knows

When had she grown tall enough to reach Kellen’s shoulder? “So consider your partners carefully,” Kellen said. “No one’s perfect, but no one has the right to hurt you.”

“You told me before. I believe you. Let’s sit down and read Ruby’s diary!” Rae led her toward the couch.

“She wanted her thoughts to be private,” Kellen reminded her.

“From her mean old father. Not from us! She would have liked us!”

“I think she would have.” This was the entertainment Kellen had been looking for: a journal from long ago, and a gentle recalling of growing up in a former time.

Rae thrust the diary at Kellen. “You read it.” She snuggled against Kellen’s side.

“The handwriting is awfully small.” But beautifully formed and clear. Kellen clicked on the floor lamp beside the couch. “I’ll read for a while, then you.”

The world receded as they read:

Father found out that Miss Harriman allowed me to study the business section of the newspaper, and after he raged at her, she lost her temper and told him I had a fine mind and I should be allowed to leave this island and go to school and I deserved to know more than how to make some rich man a pretty wife. He fired her, of course. I cried and begged, but he is adamant. I even asked Mother to intercede, but she refused. She told me Father always knows the right thing to do and we should obey him unconditionally. Then she went out in the garden to putter. Father doesn’t want her to do servants’ work; he dislikes her with dirt under her fingernails, so she wears gardening gloves and never kneels while she plants and weeds. That’s as close to defiance as she ever gets. He has crushed her spirit, if she ever had any. He really is the dreadful beast Bessie calls him. He’s gone off to the mainland to find another tutor. I hope someone runs over him or shoots him. I hope he dies. I hate this house with its empty, echoing rooms, its cowed servants, its secret passages.

“Secret passages!” Rae exclaimed. She looked around at the walls as if her x-ray vision could pierce their interior and reveal their mysteries.

That is not good.Hastily, Kellen read on.

I want to see the world, and I’ll never get off this island until I wed the man he forces on me.

I am doomed.

Kellen stopped reading. She looked at Rae.

Rae looked back.

They were both appalled.

“Poor Ruby. Did she ever get off the island?” Rae asked.

“I don’t know.”

“We can look her up online.”

Kellen waited for Rae to remember…

“No, we can’t.” Rae clutched her hair. “We don’t have service! How am I supposed to talk to Chloe every day?”

“You could do like Ruby. You could write Chloe a letter.”

Rae looked at Kellen as if she’d fallen into madness.

“Yes, you could,” Kellen insisted. “If your daddy ever has to take the helicopter to the mainland—”

“Will he?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Then why are you talking about it?”

Because I want you to feel happy. Because I don’t want you to feel cut off. Because I want you to have a confidante.“If for some reason he does go, he could mail the letter for you.”

“Like with an envelope and stamp?” Rae made it sound so primitive.

“Exactly.” Kellen knew Max probably wouldn’t be happy about her making such a promise, but she hoped, she really hoped, their sojourn here would be brief.

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