The bad luck entries told of illness, minor accidents and financial ruin. As with Orelia’s section, they graduated into far more serious afflictions. Death appeared many times. Page after page of lives damaged and destroyed grew more cruel and dreadful as the logged entries traveled through the years.

The benefits to counter-balance these proved interesting in that they related to the desires of the era. Money featured often. In the late 1920s and early 30s, stock market wins, despite the collapse, horses recovering from severe injuries, and an amusing entry wishing for no more children.

Twenty pages in, the handwriting changed as if the book had fallen into another’s ownership. The same pattern emerged. Small mishaps for many entries morphed into disasters. On and on it continued, and William counted the appearance of five different owners including Orelia.

It seemed to him that the diary influenced its owners. As they accessed its power, they experienced a one-way descent into indifference to others; even a decline into narcissism.

This reminded him of Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. A charismatic teenage Gray is given a portrait by a sensitive artist named Basil Hallward, who had become obsessed with Dorian’s beauty. Over eighteen years, Hallward’s painting of Gray records every corruption and debauched act in which he participates. The image grows uglier and more distorted over time, until it becomes the face of a monster. Gray though, remains youthful and unchanged no matter how evil his behavior.

William had always thought the painting influenced its owner, that it was the evil character. Gray’s story begins as an innocent youth, but he didn’t pay for his crimes and so is changed; his own arrogance becomes his demise.

William reflected on his original offer of help to the fledgling writer Orelia. His generous gesture hadn’t been for her sake but, if he was honest, came from his own vanity. Was that such a crime though? How many other people were charitable, good Samaritans because they wanted to brag or appear superior? If millionaires required no gain from altruistic pursuits, why were hospital or school wings named after them?

Each of the book’s owners began with positive intentions. Nem, avenging her mother’s murder or this Doctor Shepherd. Then they descended into Dorian Gray’s contemptuous thinking where nobody else mattered.

Was it in their nature? Or did the power of the book change them? If the latter was true, he didn’t want it in his possession any longer than necessary.

Orelia described this book once as a balance sheet, of sorts. Now he understood. It was a balance sheet of life, of justice, of serendipity. A book of luck.

Him possessing it may also mean he now had her power. Could he then swap back his luck? Recover what she’d taken from him?

He looked up and scanned the emptying park. The boy with the kite and his father had long gone. The walkers, their circuits completed, had left. An elderly couple, the only ones left in sight, played fetch with a small white dog named Ella, who chased after a ball but refused to return it to them no matter how many times they called her. Within moments they gave up and headed away, berating the animal for its disobedience.