Blood Ties by Jane A. Adams

the habits that went with it.
    â€˜What’s that?’ his mum said, pointing to a bundle she didn’t recognize.
    â€˜Don’t know,’ Kevin said. He picked the bundle up, noting the blue linen and scruffy white lace. ‘Looks like a pillowcase. Or a bit of one.’ He unwrapped the bundle and laid the contents out on the bed.
    â€˜Where did it come from?’
    â€˜Eddy’s place. It has to have. I’ve not been anywhere else.’
    â€˜But how did it get there?’
    Kevin picked up the little book. It was pink and floral and locked up tight with a brass catch and tiny padlock. The word ‘Diary’ was emblazoned across the front in curly letters.
    She took it from him. ‘Locked,’ she said. ‘Hang on a minute.’
    She left the room and Kevin picked up the other documents. Two notebooks filled with close written script that he recognized as Eddy’s handwriting. He recognized the books, too. Eddy kept logs of all his finds, buying batches of the same dull-red exercise books he had used when he was still teaching. Kevin scanned the pages, puzzled. He was sure he knew about most of what Eddy had found; the two of them regularly shared their successes and their failures over the odd pint or a cup of tea and ‘kiddy biscuits’ as Eddy called their mutual choice of creams and chocolate fingers.
    Kevin was sure he didn’t recognize most of these items.
    He looked more closely, realized that not every entry recorded finds. Some appeared to be references to books or documents or parish registers – Kevin recognized the way Eddy annotated them. His mother returned and took the diary. She fiddled with something and then opened the little book and handed it to Kevin.
    â€˜There. I knew I had a hair grip somewhere. You can do it with a paper clip, too; any bit of tough wire really.’
    â€˜You got it open.’
    â€˜Of course I did. So what is all this stuff?’
    Kevin sat down on the edge of the bed, flicking through the pages. Two hands had written these pages. The first was clearly young. The letters round and exuberant and, somehow Kevin felt, enthusiastic. The second was Eddy’s familiar, tight lettering.
    Kevin read a little of the first pages. He knew it to be intrusive and yet felt compelled, as though the voice of his old friend was telling him it was all right to look.
    â€˜I think this was Karen’s,’ he said. ‘His daughter’s diary.’
    â€˜She died, didn’t she?’
    Kevin nodded. ‘Yeah. Eddy told me about her. He said she was seventeen and killed in a car crash. When I first met him he told me he’d had a kid; she died when she was my age, then. He hardly ever talked about her, like it hurt too much.’
    â€˜How long ago was it? When she died?’
    Kevin shrugged. ‘Dunno. I forget. Twenty years ago mebbe. But this is her book, must be.’ He closed the book. ‘What should we do with it, Mam? I mean, he must have put it in the bag. What did he want me to do with it?’
    She took the diary from him and turned the pages slowly, pausing to read extracts. Kevin watched, seeing her lips move as she examined the words. ‘Looks like she wrote this in the few months before she died,’ she said. ‘Look at the dates.’
    She sat down beside him on the bed. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Eddy trusted you with this, so you’ve got to figure out why. It was his girl’s book, so it was precious to him someway.’ She frowned. ‘What night did you go back to pick up your bag?’
    Kevin thought about it. ‘Oh, must have been Tuesday,’ he said. ‘I went to show him what we’d found up at Bakers Field. Them coins, you know. Mam, what’s wrong?’
    His mother had turned very white.
    â€˜Don’t you see,’ she said. ‘You were there the night he died. What if some damn fool of a policeman thinks you might have been