WOODRIDGE, ILLINOIS
Autumn stared out the window of her yellow house. Her hand rested on the swell of her stomach. It had been two months since she was released from the hospital. According to police, it took them months to find her body. They had found her a mile away from the site of the accident. The police couldn't find the man who hit her car.
Tears filled her eyes when she thought of Daniel. She missed him so much. She wished she had the chance to tell him about their baby. Beth came over to visit.
"How come you never told me that you were pregnant?" Beth asked. "Who's the father?"
"You woudln't believe me if I told you," Autumn said. "And besides, it doesn't matter. I'll never see him again." She began to sob.
Beth tried to comfort her. She handed Autumn her mail. "The book you ordered awhile ago finally came in," she said. "I didn't know you were interested in what happened in seventeen hundreds."
Autumn began to cry again. Beth decided it was time to leave. She said good-bye and left. After Autumn was done crying, she looked at the book. It was a diary of a man who was on a pirate ship as a cabin boy. She forced herself to open the book.
She stared at the first page. She recognized the handwriting. It was Daniel's! She skipped the pages she had read already.
May 26th, she read. Autumn and I made love for the first time last night. I cannot describe it. I believe I had caught my first glimpse of Heaven. It was everything I thought of and more. I will remember that day until my dying breath. I love Autumn so much that I fear my heart will burst!
She wondered if he had started a second journal when he realized that his first one was missing. The publishers must have combined the two journals together, she thought. She got to the entry that he had written when she left him.
Journal, he wrote, Autumn is gone. Mary Ann had told me that she just left. What am I to do now? I cannot go on with my life. Without her, life has no meaning. My heart lies in pieces at my feet. I know I must pick them up and move on but why? I fear I will never love again. Everything I see reminds me of Autumn. I want to die. I cannot go on.
She flipped through the book but there were no more entries. She wondered what happened to him after the fire. What did he think when he realized I had disappeared? she wondered. In the afterword, the publishers wrote that shortly after the last entry, Daniel had disappeared. There was a fire at his house and when the fire burned out, no one knew where Daniel was. Nor did they find a woman named Autumn Maxwell.
Where did he go? she thought. I know he made it out of the fire alive. I saw him. On the back cover was a picture of Daniel. She gazed at it lovingly and traced his features with her fingers.
"Oh, Daniel," she whispered. "What a fool I have been. The man I was meant to share my life with was in front of me the whole time I was in the past. I love you, Daniel. I love you so much."
Another month went by. Autumn read and reread Daniel's journal a thousand times. She dreamed of him at night.
It was the first of the month when she began getting flowers from a secret admirer. She couldn't think of anyone who would send her flowers. She wondered if it was Beth, trying to cheer her up.
But when she talked to Beth, she denied sending the flowers. "I really think you have a secret admirer," Beth said.
"I don't care," Autumn said.
