When the police interviewed her after Morris’ body was discovered, they’d shown her grainy park surveillance footage. She suspected then what had happened. If she hadn’t visited William in the hospital and seen his thin and disheveled appearance, she might not have recognized him in the video. Though the angle was only from behind as he approached Morris, she knew.

She didn’t tell the detectives because she wanted to see what would happen. He didn’t scare her, and she needed to know what he knew. Nem had all the time in the world.

The best theory she could come up with was that two people whose names were in the diary coming together created a collision of misfortune. Perhaps the diary wasn’t infallible. The entries held no clues either. The line after their argument for William was the same as last time she checked.

William Barnes … writing career decay.

Morris’ fate was there but not his death. She’d wanted him alive to recover her money, and not become involved in a suspected murder. Something had gone very wrong.

His original fate had appeared in the flowery handwriting, which over the years became closer and closer to her own. A phantom hand forging her style. But it had changed on its own.

All this had become a growing concern. William somewhere out there worried her. This had forced her to create extra protection, in the way of continuous good fortune channeled into her life. This though disrupted her routine, forcing her to venture out nearly every day to seek new sources to feed the minus side, so she could use the positive.

Somehow Barnes had entwined himself in her business and even created chaos, aka Morris’ death. This was more than a minor annoyance. Now another unlikely misfortune. Her bag gone.

“Ma’am, if you leave your number, we’ll call you.”

She looked up at Benny the waiter who’d interrupted her thoughts and smiled. “Thank you, that’s very kind.”

Nem practiced caution with any connections or contacts, so she gave out her cell to few people. Even old friends such as Diane, or Peg and Ray didn’t have it. Nobody suspected anything about her or the diary for all these years because once she walked through one life door, she locked it and her past firmly behind her.

Instead of giving Benny the right number, she transposed three digits. The bag’s return was of no concern. Her most valuable possession was still safe. Things going wrong for her though wasn’t normal and she needed to discover why. When she arrived home, she’d go over everything out of the norm which had occurred over the past few weeks. See if anything stood out to her.

As she left the café she headed for the bank, only twenty minutes’ walk away. There, she kept a spare set of house and car keys in a safe deposit box, along with the diary and a large sum, which she never bothered to count. The diary was always able to create more in various ways. These were her escape supplies if ever needed.