THIRTY-TWO
Uncle Abraham was docile, at least. He allowed us to get him into bed, and he swallowed the tincture Doctor Green gave him. He fought the drug’s effects, but he was not able to fight for long, and it pulled him into fitful sleep.
A quick search of his things revealed a journal, but I was not hopeful. What I found was a diary, a thin volume with three-hundred and sixty entries and five blank spaces of no more than five or six lines each. There was a second volume beneath it in the bag, identical in every way except for the year stamped on the cover and the fact that it was empty. I read it from cover to cover in less than half an hour and found nothing of use. I held each page up to the light of a candle, just in case, but there was no hidden writing. I passed it along to Dad a
