Journals of the Secret Keeper Read Online Free PDF Page A

openly and honestly that
she had been raped and here he was fanning her old
fears.
"Willetta, I'm not going to hurt you. I don't
know what's wrong with me. I better go on back to
the house. Your keys are in your car."
Andrik turned and took long quick strides
back to his truck. He was more ashamed than he
had ever been in his life. He wanted Willetta, but
never by force. He had never threatened a woman
in such a way before. Even grief stricken there was
no excuse for doing it, especially to Willetta of all
people. The incident left him unnerved and
depressed. He climbed into his truck and sped away
as if demons were after him.
#
Willetta breathed a sigh of relief. Thank
God for thinking men. Obviously Andrik was a
thinker and had some control. She saw the horror
on his face and recognized it for what it was, when
he finally realized how stupid he was acting. She
knew firsthand how fatalistic the combination of
testosterone and stupidity could be. One of her new
mottos was to steer clear of it. Andrik's quick
retreat had instantly redeemed him. She knew she
had no real reason to ever fear him. So, her
thoughts slid back to Mama Jean.
The date was September the fifteenth, twothousand and seven. According to the coroner,
Mama Jean had passed away in the early morning
hours between three and four. She was seventy-five
years old. Willetta remembered the year of her
birth, nineteen thirty-three. It was written
somewhere in a Bible.
Willetta thought about the black trunk
buried beneath the mulberry tree. She opened the
screened door and stepped onto the porch.
Shielding her eyes against the settling sun, she
scanned the yard to the right. About hundred feet
away stood the mulberry tree. Its trunk was twisted
and misshapen. It seemed stooped over like an old
man and with its naked branches and absence of
mulberries the tree looked dead.
Willetta jumped off the porch and walked
barefooted over to the tree. "Well, ain't you a sight,"
she breathed. "I sure hope I don't end up looking
like you reading about other folks business and
holding it all in." She put her right hand against the
bark of the tree. Chips of bark crumbled beneath
her palm and fell away, but the tree was warm. She
didn't know if it was warm with life's blood or from
the sun.
Willetta looked at the ground. There were
no telltale signs of anything buried beneath. The
grass wasn't broken. She frowned. Surely Mama
Jean didn't expect her to get a shovel and go digging
all around the tree looking for a black trunk. She
got on her knees and crawled around the trunk of
the tree. There was nothing there.
She kept
crawling in wider circles until her knee landed on a
rock. It hurt so badly, Willetta fell onto her back
and just squeezed the knee against her chest for a
minute. She felt around on the ground for the rock
and was shocked to find an old tarnished handle.
She wrapped her hand around it and pulled.
It
didn't budge. Willetta got up off her back and onto
her knees again. This time when she pulled it lifted
and the ground around it lifted too. Willetta was
stunned. She had just uncovered a coffin-sized hole
in the ground that had obviously been made years
before her time and possibly before Mama Jean's
time.
Mama Jean's warning sounded off in her head,
"Don't touch it, if you don't believe in secrets."
Willetta dropped the handle and ran back to the
porch. She was alone and afraid. Mama Jean was
dead and all her secrets were buried beneath the
mulberry tree. Willetta knew without a doubt that
she was not ready to spend the night alone in Mama
Jean's house. She jumped in her car and drove as
fast as she could the fifteen miles to the Thompson
Estates.
CHAPTER 7
Volume 2, pg. 3 (December 1901):
"Its cold
outside. Ain't much for me to do but wait til
summertime. I don't know if this land is really
mine or not. Ain't nobody been around asking
questions. It's been four months since Mrs.
Williams died. I'm glad them white folks didn't
like Mr. and Mrs. Williams. That's gone