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"He's afraid," Hannah said, running fingers through her black cap of hair. "He figured me for a harmless eccentric, but he won't be able to shrug off the unexplainable anymore. And that means he's going to have to take your warning seriously." |
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Abby ached for him. She loved him so much. Would his being forced to take her seriously let him care for her, too? |
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Or would it drive them even farther apart? |
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Abby excused herself after helping Hannah with the supper dishes. She wondered how Mike was after his explosive departure, but she had tortured herself enough. She retired to her room to learn what had happened to her family. |
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The last journal, from the bottom of the box, had fared even worse than she'd feared. She could not pry most of the stuck pages apart, and the ink on those that she could separate had run. There were only a few pages she could read the entire way through. |
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But in just touching the volume, she felt connected with the past. "Poor Lucy," Abby sighed as she gathered from the first pages of the journal how Lucy and their father had suffered when Abby disappeared without a trace. "Papa, I'm sorry!" |
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She skipped a clump of stuck pages, reading what she could. "Oh, Lucy, I'm so glad!" she said after learning Arlen had finally asked Lucy to be |
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