A book in her bag shouldn't be such a big deal. But for an inexplicable reason, his heart was pounding.
"Why cut a tree?" she would say.
He suddenly thought of the pens he'd just picked up. One red, one black.
If she never used a book why would she need pens?
The journal was of thick hand-made paper.
She surely wouldn't use a book like this to scribble notes from her back-to-back meetings, would she?
The book was still open in his hand, it's pages facing the floor.
All he had to do was flip it. But he hesitated, and looked up at his wife.
She hadn't moved at all. Except for the slight rise and fall of her chest as she still breathed.
A part of him felt ashamed that he had discovered her notebook. Like he was violating her privacy.
Her voice echoed from a memory, "There will be no secrets between us. Promise me."
He had promised. She hadn't.
He had assumed the promise worked both ways. He never asked.
Impulsively, he flipped the book over. And stared.
For a moment, the words didn't register.
His overwhelmed brain saw the date, day and time written in red. Beneath that were rows and rows of sentences, written in black, in her tiny scrawled handwriting.
It was a journal. But it wasn't in English.
He got a memory flash to their wedding day. She looked beautiful in her white gown.
He remembered her laughing as his best man was clowning around.
"Tell me something about you that Eric doesn't know." he had joked. She had made a face and laughed. "I used to speak to my dog in French."
"French..." it echoed in his mind as he looked at the unfamiliar words.
Slowly, almost in a daze, he sat on the couch next to her bed.
Why would she have a journal that was so secret that she carried it with her even to work?
So secret that she felt the need to write in it in a foreign language?
Almost at random, he picked out a word.
It was the last word in her journal before the blank pages.
It stood in isolation after a sentence.
Almost like writing 'The End' after a story.
Décès.
With a mounting feeling of dread he opened Google translate.
It turned out to be French.
It meant 'death'.
YOU ARE READING
What Hides Within
Mystery / Thriller[COMPLETED - Highest rank #34 in Mystery/Thriller] It took a long time for Eric to realise that Carrie was the love of his life. But just a year into their marriage, Carrie has an accident and slips into coma. A devastated Eric stumbles on to her jo...
