Atherton Hale has asked to meet me at the Evanston Library next Wednesday at 2 p.m. I’ve read and reread his note a dozen times. Hazel says I must go—as if there was any doubt.What Do I Wear??
January 11th, 1972
Libraries have always been my favorite places and now kissing in the library is my favorite thing to do. How scandalous!
The spine of the diary moved loosely in Leah’s hands, front and back covers shifting against the paper within, as if the book wasn’t as full as it should be. She leafed through, flipping pages between her fingers, until the entries stopped, abruptly, way sooner than they should have done. The last half of the diary had been ripped from the cover, leaving jagged edges where the paper used to be.
On the final double page, three words—completely at odds with the previous bubbly entries—slashed through the lines over and over again.
IHate Him
IHate Him
IHate Him
IHate Him
IHate Him
IHate Him
IHate Him
IHate Him
IHate Him
The handwriting sprawled with explosive abandon, screaming in painful fury. Pressed deep into the page, the final three words had been underlined with such force it had split the paper.
Leah snapped the diary shut and pulled it against her chest, breath frozen.
What the hell, Esther?
She sat on the bedroom floor for a full ten minutes, fingers running up and down the spine of the book. She’d gone in search of information and unearthed a secret. Like heating Cup Noodles and popping the lid to find oatmeal, it was an unwelcome and disturbing surprise.
Chapter 2
Jackson
“Run that by me again?”
Jackson took a gulp of lukewarm coffee to buy himself a moment. He curled his fingers around the pen on his desk, clicking the nib in and out with an agitated thumb.
Satisfaction coated his father’s voice. “I’ve signed the contracts on the Kingswater plot.”
It sounded just as bad the second time around. “The cash reserves aren’t there to do that right now. We’ve discussed this.”
“We’ve done bigger developments than this one.”
“Yes, but only when we had the resources. Not to mention the manpower.”
His dad shrugged that off. “Waiting for the funds to free up will take too long. To secure the site now makes more sense. If we’re spread too thin, we’ll increase the construction crew.”
Hale Evolution, the family business, was an established architectural and project management firm with an in-house construction division. Mainly, they redesigned current workspaces to improve productivity and image. Sometimes they worked on commercial developments from scratch. His father had set up thebusiness twenty-five years ago and there were currently over thirty staff on the payroll, with contractors taken on for each project.
“With what money?” Jackson pushed the three words out between his teeth.
Right now, they were juggling three other sizable jobs, all at varying stages of completion and all of which seemed to be hitting delay after complication after hiccup. Signing off on a whole new plot required a level of funding that went way beyond tightening their belts or cutting staff. And neither he nor his father had the money immediately available for a personal injection of capital.
