From its size I thought the book was a Bible, and I felt cheated. I pulled out the drawer and slid it into the center of the room, held the book in my hands. It was heavy and ancient with its warm weight. The silver fountain pen had a Celtic design engraved and etched into the sides.

The leather was worn smooth, a small dent in the upper left corner rubbed to raw, as if Mother had placed her thumb there and moved it back and forth over many, many years. Wrapped around the book was a leather string braided with twine and a blue stone knotted into its end. I undid the cord and opened the book to the middle. I’ve always done this when I pick up a book—I flip to the center, read a page to try to discover if the words on it resonate. I know some people open to the beginning, others to the last parts. Mother, if I had to guess, would have opened a book to the conclusion—to see how it ended before she agreed to begin.

I’d never seen this leather book I held in my hands. After moving into the well-lit bedroom, I sat on the bench at the end of my parents’ bed and allowed the book to fall open in my lap. Pages and pages of my mother’s handwriting in black fountain ink were crooked across the thick cream paper. I flipped quickly through the pages. She wrote in an upward slant that left open space on the top left and the bottom right.

“What is this?” I mumbled the words aloud while my finger ran along the sentence in the middle of a random page.

I’m hiding inside this house tonight with a broken heart. I’ve never really known what brokenness was or what it meant. But it’s not a broken feeling; it’s an empty feeling.

My heart stilled like the breath I hold underwater, knowing if I inhale, I’ll die. Then I shivered, lifting my gaze to stare across the room to the marble fireplace, where the framed oil painting of my mother in her wedding dress hung over the mantel. I flipped to the opening page.

To my precious granddaughter, Lilly, with all the secrets and power held within words.

—Lillian Rose Caulfield, 1952, December 31

This was a journal, a leather journal given to my mother by her grandmother, my great-grandmother. I counted backward to 1952—Mother would have been twelve years old when she started this diary. I glanced forward and realized she had written in it only once a year—every New Year’s Eve.

I read the first page: