“Yes, and you can do with it whatever you want.” Lily nodded. “You can put it in a museum or keep it and write in it, then pass it down to your daughter.”

Holly brought two clean composition books from her backpack. “All right, let’s look at the first page.”

“Why two?” Lily asked.

“One to take notes in, one to actually write the assignment in,” Holly explained. “Too bad I don’t have a computer, so I could type all the information into it.”

“It’ll be far more effective this way.” Lily opened the journal and read aloud what Ophelia had written in the first entry.

Holly sat in stunned silence, her mouth slightly open and her eyes wide. “Why couldn’t Ophelia take care of things? You did after Daddy left. I can’t believe my kinfolk had slaves. That’s so wrong. A million kids in our schools are black.”

Holly’s question was valid for a fourteen-year-old kid just learning about the horrors of the Civil War. Lily thought about them all for a few seconds while she kind of basked in the comment that Holly had made about her taking care of things. The child would never know how much that simple sentence meant to Lily.

“It was a different time,” Lily finally said. “Women couldn’t vote. People weren’t allowed to be a lot of things. The first female doctor graduated from medical school only a few years before that war broke out, and there were no woman lawyers until after the war.”

“Why?” Holly was aghast.

“Because women hadn’t fought yet for those rights. They were considered weak, and the men had to take care of them,” Lily explained.

“God, I’m glad I didn’t live back then,” Holly said with high drama. “I can’t imagine living like Ophelia did. I’m going to research”—she sighed so loud that she almost snorted—“but I can’t because I don’t have a computer.”

“There’s a whole set of encyclopedias on the bookcase in the living room, and you can always use your free time at school to look things up in the library,” Lily said.

“Whatapedias?” Holly asked.

“Very funny. Go down there and look it up, and I’ll take a picture of this page. We’ll talk about the next entry another day, and you can see how things go from then until your Granny Vera wrote in it her last time,” Lily said.

“Thanks, Mama,” Holly said, and opened her notebook.