“Oh, we’re quoting Martin Luther King. And the rest of his speech, you’ve forgotten that? Returning violence for violence multiplies violence. That book wasn’t meant for you, was it? The entry made for your mother. That you wished her dead. Really? Because she wouldn’t let you keep a kitten? An animal. The entries she’d written for you were only for good wishes. To see the light, be kind and enjoy happiness.”

William moved to his left and forward, so he now stood beside the headstone. He placed a reverent hand on the slab as though the woman buried below still required his defense. His fingertips tingled as if her spirit imbued him with the energy of good.

“Your mother understood the dangers of the book. That it was not a power for most hands. She died trying to stop you from ever possessing it. She’d written that you might never own it. Twice. Hidden between a previous owner’s entries. Your Aunt Aggie. Did she see traits in her own daughter that frightened her? Or the entry you’d put there condemning her to death? Maybe she never saw it because she was already dead.”

Orelia’s eyes grew wide. This close he saw her lips quiver as she shook her head in a slow, considered motion. William had sent her on a journey to her past.

“No, that’s not the truth. I didn’t know. She kept it from me. I was so angry that day. All I intended was to take it from the hiding place and use it to bargain. I’d keep the kitten and give her back the diary. I only discovered what happened when they gave me the book later. Her fault, not mine, for not telling me. That book was to be mine after her. She needed to explain what it did. What it could do.”

She addressed her mother’s resting place as if William was no longer there.

“Things might have been different if you’d trusted me. Maybe then I might have been able to live my life making pathetic, little wishes like yours. Health and happiness and love. Ha! Some of us face tougher stuff. Life forces us to make horrific decisions. If you had the courage to do what was necessary, you’d be alive. I could have grown up in sweetness and light. Become a different girl.”

William thought about the words in the book, the varied handwriting of the entries dating back over a century. The references to babies birthed healthy, diseased crops renewed by unseasonal rain, illness cured by a miracle, lives touched by love. Every owner had begun in goodness. Only Orelia had started with violence and anger from the first.

He’d hoped in making her face the past, her part in her mother’s death, an epiphany might smack her in the conscience. She’d see the only way to free herself and make amends was to stop and be sorry for what she’d done. He would help her. That was his means to salvage his own soul.