The Diary

A couple of weeks ago, I came home one afternoon to find a large envelope leaning against the wall beneath my mailbox. It was addressed to me, but had no return address. When I opened it, I found the diary.

Well, not exactly. When I opened it, I found a book with a gray cloth cover, dark green at the binding. The kind of thing accountants might once have used. Except that it had pictures pasted in. And handwriting, not numbers. Only when I read a few pages did I realize it was a diary.

A strange sort of diary. For one thing, it had no dates, and many of its pages had obviously been torn out. For another, it became pretty clear that the entries that remained were not chronological. But that was later.

Then, that first afternoon, I was mainly just curious, and a little reluctant to intrude. Who could have sent me such a thing? I had no idea. There was no note, and the events described in the entries I had read were unfamiliar. But there was the envelope, with my name and address on it.

So, over the next few days, I read it. Maybe I shouldn’t have. But I did. At first, I thought an explanation would turn up. A phone call. A letter. As I read further, of course, I understood that none would. And why this thing had come to me.

All I can really tell you is that it’s good to be polite. And helpful when you can be. Godspeed.


/next