Plain Secrets. Kit Wilkinson

well enough. Then she blew out her candle and slipped down the stairs in bare feet.

      “Thomas?” she whispered into the dark room. At the foot of the stairs, she searched the corners of the large room. A few beams of moonlight lit the space, as well as the dying embers in the fireplace. It must have been later than she thought. A shiver trickled down her spine. The hole in the window had left the room quite chilly. Thomas would have to get a new piece of glass for that right away.

      Speaking of Thomas, where was he? The downstairs seemed to be empty. “Thomas? Are you there?”

      Hannah shuffled to a chair in front of the fire where a nice warm quilt lay. She unfolded the heavy blanket and draped it over her shoulders.

      Click.

      Her head turned fast to the front door. It popped open and swung wide, letting in another blast of cool air.

      “Thomas?” she called loudly this time. Still no answer. Had the door opened on its own? No. Thomas had locked it.

      Hannah’s pulse spiked as she had that feeling again—that feeling she’d had in the barn the other morning. The feeling she was not alone. Coming downstairs had been a bad idea.

      She peered out onto the dark porch. “Thomas? Are you there?”

      Another floorboard creaked; her heart plummeted. Thomas was not outside. But someone was there, in the kitchen. She had to get back upstairs and wake Nana Ruth. Forgetting the opened door, Hannah raced back over the hardwood floors to the bottom of the steps.

      She looked up, ready to ascend, when she realized her mistake. The intruder was not in the kitchen. He was on the stairs.

      A man dressed in all black came at her from the stairwell, face hidden in the shadows. He pushed her down to the floor, almost as if he had tripped. Her hands became pinned beneath her chest. Her head landed with a thunk onto the hardwood.

      “Don’t make a sound,” he said. “I won’t hurt you. I just… I need the journal. You have it. I know you do.”

      He came down on her, pressing a knee in her back so that she could not get free. “So, where is it?”

      Where was what? What was he talking about? She knew nothing about a journal. “I have no journal,” she pleaded. “I know not of what you speak.”

      He pushed her harder into the floor. “But you have to. You have to have Jessica’s journal. She said you knew about it, about where it was. I need it. You need it. Where is it?”

      Jessica’s journal? What was he talking about? How could Jessica have a journal? Hannah and Nana Ruth had already been through the girl’s things. There was nothing like a journal. She knew not what to say to this man. But she wondered if this journal he spoke of was the reason for Jessica’s death.

      Help me, Lord. What do I do?