The words slammed into me as if I’d been physically hit. Shock pinned me to my seat.

I was working on forgiving him for Diya, but if he messed with our business, the tiny baby auction house I spent every ounce of my life energy to birth and nurture…

I texted him back.

I don’t quit.

We were going to have to talk as soon as I stepped off the plane.

To keep myself distracted until then, I opened Violet’s diary at last. Only to discover that it wasn’t Violet’s diary.

Chapter Two

Johanna

1887, Amsterdam, Netherlands

We were not expecting visitors when the doorbell rang in the middle of Friday afternoon.

Mama and the maid had emptied the kitchen cabinets, washed them out, and were waiting for them to dry in Amsterdam’s summer heat. The back door stood open for the breeze. I was sitting at the table next to my sister Mien, scribbling in my journal and hoping to go unnoticed. Anke, a quiet village girl who was new to service, was using Mama’s wedding ring to divine whether Mien would have boys or girls someday.

Mama’s ring was suspended from a silk ribbon—it had to be red for the divination to work—over Mien’s open palm. If the ring turned left, boy. If the ring turned right, girl.

“Oh, a boy, another boy!” Mama set down her embroidery, a pink flush of pleasure painting her cheeks.

Then the ring stopped and would turn no more.

“Ten children, just like me.” Mama clapped. “Your turn, Jo.”

I could see the crimson drops my heart bled onto the page in front of me as if they were real. “I don’t care.” I should have taken my journal and hidden upstairs. “I am not in a blessed state.”

Neither was Mien, who, at twenty-nine, was old enough to leave childish games behind. Neither of us was married, although Mien, being four years older, would probably be marched to the altar before me. My dearest friend, Anna, should have been sitting at the table—at least she was engaged. Alas, Anna, always the lucky one, was in Scheveningen with her parents, on their annual vacation at the sea.

“Don’t you want to know if you’ll have a family?”

Mien’s disapproval needled under my skin, but I swallowed a heated response. I had but a moment earlier promised my diary to be a better person, more patient in all things.

On the other hand, I had not pledged to be silent.

“I want to know why we are alive. I want to find my purpose.” At the end of my life, I wanted to be able to look back and be proud of what I had accomplished. I wanted to leave behind…something.

Mien’s groan was so unladylike that Mama tsked at her. Then she smiled at me. “Someday, you will meet the right man and marry, Jo.”