Sacred Trust. Meg O'Brien

were filled with largely unreadable ramblings, scrawled in blue ink from a ballpoint pen. For years, I toted this damn box with me every time I moved, like a turtle unwilling to shed its shell. I’d go zooming down a freeway with this stupid thing in my trunk, scared to death I’d be killed by some idiot suffering road rage and my survivors would end up reading all that dross. I couldn’t let go of the dross, however, neither the journals nor the man. Thus my nightly prayer became, “If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my journals to take.”

      Now I know that there are more ways of dying than one can conceive. Further, there are days when there is no Lord, or at least he’s checked out for the day.

      Jeffrey came along after that three-year journal-writing madness, on one of those Lordless days. My heart still had a hole in it, and my car still had that box in its trunk. I just didn’t think about it so much anymore, thoughtlessly shoving it aside to make room for groceries every Friday night. Then I met Jeffrey. And a whole new literary era began.

      Because heaven was closed that day, I fell head over asinine heels in love with Jeffrey Northrup, right off the bat. And because I still believed in journals, I spread the craziness of our lives across the clean pages of a bright new book, as if making up the bed of my heart with fresh new sheets. In the beginning, I wrote down all the “I know he really loves me” stuff and the “I’ll die if he doesn’t remember my birthday” madness.

      The irony is, Jeffrey is dead now, not I. Oh, he walks and talks. But for me the funeral took place six months ago.

      I met my husband sixteen years ago at the Pebble Beach Golf Club. I was down from San Francisco having lunch with a couple of other women, all three of us in our early twenties. They were friends of mine and secretaries, as Jeffrey would say, though they did all but run Monterey for their employers. I was working as a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, and had a pretty good career going. I’d come down for lunch on a day off and to soak up some sun.

      Jeffrey was at the club that day playing golf. At two hundred dollars a game, that set him far above us. But he came in all sweaty and smiling, especially when he saw us. Not that he knew us. Jeffery, I later learned, always smiled at good-looking women.

      I counted myself among them, at that time, the good-looking women. I had dark hair that fell to my shoulders in shiny waves, and huge brown eyes. There was something exotic about me, I’d been told by some. Not that you could prove it by me. I still had those mental tapes from childhood, the ones that said I couldn’t do anything right, my hair looked like a rat’s nest, and I’d never amount to much.

      How I got those tapes, where they came from, is a mystery to me still. Certainly not from my parents, who supported me in every way. Sometimes I think those beliefs, running over and over in my head, came with me from another life, that I carried them in when I was born.

      Which presumes a belief in reincarnation—something I’d rather not think about. The very idea of having to do all this over again and again and again makes me cry, at least on those days when it doesn’t make me laugh.

      Jeffrey made me laugh. At first, he said truly funny things, a born comic who never made it onstage but went, instead, into politics and business. Then, later, he made me laugh in another way. Oh, I know I shouldn’t have. But he’d come into the bedroom stark naked with that—that appendage sticking out ten inches if it was one, like some old-time romance writer’s “flaming sword,” and he’d look at me with those sultry eyes and rasp, “You really want it, don’t you?”

      And I couldn’t help it. His hair would be wet from the shower, black curls clinging to his forehead, and my eyes would travel from that to the green eyes I had once loved, the aristocratic nose, the chest a thicket of graying black hair, and I’d laugh.

      Largely, I’d laugh because by then I knew I wasn’t the only woman Jeffrey used that line on. We’d been married ten years, and good old Jeffrey had cut a swath a mile wide through the women of Carmel with that flaming sword. The very idea that I’d still want either him or his impressive appendage was ludicrous. So I’d try to muffle the chuckles, but, well…

      Several times I thought Jeffrey might hit me when I laughed. He never did. Instead, he got his revenge by taking away my child.

      The vet gives Murphy a couple of shots and, after voicing innumerable questions about the letter A, declares him on the mend—physically, at least. Murphy still has a sad, hound-dog-look about him. I take him home and find Frannie waiting for us, though it isn’t her usual day to work.

      “I couldn’t believe it when you told me what happened,” she says, her hazel eyes worried under the mop of red hair. She gives Murphy a hug. “Are you okay, fella?”

      He doesn’t seem ready to be touched, backing off from her and giving a slight growl, which stuns me. Never have I seen Murphy behave this way.

      “The doctor said he might be touchy for a while,” I offer by way of apology.

      Frannie nods and follows me into the kitchen. “I swear to you, Abby, I don’t know how he got out. I was sure he was inside when I left.”

      “Well, he’s a sneaky little guy. When he gets it into his head to bust loose, he does have his ways.”

      “That’s true,” she says thoughtfully. “Remember the day he ran out while I was bringing in groceries? I thought he was up in your room all the while. And one day he scooted right past you when you came in, and you had to run halfway down Scenic to catch him, him with his tail wagging all the way.”

      We both laugh at the ordinariness of Murphy’s escapes, carefully skirting the truth—that this is not one of those ordinary times, and the letter carved into my dog’s back only proves it.

      “It’s hard to keep track of him lately,” I say, waving a hand around the kitchen. “There are too many places in this house for him to disappear to, especially now that Jeffrey’s not here half the time.”

      Frannie shakes her head. “You should sell this place. Cliff said he could get at least three times what you bought it for sixteen years ago.”

      Cliff, her new boyfriend, is a local Realtor.

      “And go where?” I say. “Out to the valley? Into a condo? I’d miss the ocean too much. Besides, I’ve always liked this place.”

      Frannie casts a look around. “You’ve got a great view, I’ll say that. But if I were you, I’d be nervous alone here at night.”

      “Nervous? Why?”

      “You don’t know? You haven’t heard it?” She clamps her lips down as if wishing she hadn’t said anything.

      “Heard what, Frannie?” I am only half smiling. “For heaven’s sake, you’re not buying into that old ghost story, are you?”

      “Hell, no. I’m talking about something much more earthly than that. Last week, when I was up in the attic—”

      She breaks off, turning away.

      “What about the attic? Did you hear something?”

      Her green eyes flick my way. “Why? Did you?”

      “Frannie, stop it! Just tell me. What did you hear?”

      “A noise,” she says. “Just a noise, that’s all. It took me a while to get up the courage to go up there. And when I did, there wasn’t anyone there.”

      “That’s odd,” I say. “I heard a noise, too. It scared me half to death.”

      Her eyes meet mine, widening. “What do you think it was?”

      “Now that it’s daytime and the sun’s out? I’m inclined to believe it was a squirrel.”

      “And last night?”

      “Last night, I was certain it was that guy in the movies with the hockey mask, lurking in the shadows to grab me.”

      She wraps her arms around herself, shivering. “I kind of thought that,