Emma's Secret: A Novel

bedroom was a bookshelf lined with Dottie’s journals. Each cover was a different color, with each hue symbolizing her feelings. The years he had been off at war were all black. Every one of them, except for the first and last. Jack had bought the first journal for her before he left. He chose one with a soft yellow cover because he thought it would make her smile. He’d asked her to write letters to him in that journal. He never thought he’d be gone for so long. The last journal—which Dottie had written in after Jack was listed as MIA—was one he was never tempted to read. The white daisies dotting the soft pink cover symbolized new hope. But the hope she’d then held in her heart wasn’t for his return. She’d thought he was dead. The hope was instead of future love. Dottie later confessed that Doug had given her that journal for her birthday.
    Even now, Jack hated that cover.
    The day he’d returned from war, Jack had brought his Dottie a gift from the shop on base. It was another journal for the love of his life. His return was the start of their new life. He’d even boughtMary one, sure that Dottie had passed along her journal-writing passion to their daughter. The journal he’d bought for Dottie was bound in a pretty baby-blue material with small yellow flowers. He still remembered his first night back home. They sat on the bed, both a little shy to immediately rekindle the intimacy they’d had.
    “What are you doing, Dottie-mine?” Jack had asked when she laid a pink journal in her lap. Dottie’s eyes had filled as her fingers ran along the white daisies.
    “Putting an end to the black days,” she’d whispered.
    Jack watched her as she slowly opened the baby-blue journal he’d bought her to the first page. She wrote the date at the top right-hand corner and then glanced over at him.
    “What will you write?” he’d asked.
    Dottie wrote three words on the page in the flowing script he’d grown to love.
    Jack is home.
    With a teary smile, she closed the cover. Jack reached for the journal and tossed it on the floor before gathering the woman he loved more than life into his arms.
    After all their years together, all the nights they had shared a bed, that night was the most memorable. They’d created another baby that night, only to lose their son one month after he was born. Basil Jack Henry. They named him after Jack’s father.
    Jack glanced down at the black journal in his hands and knew he couldn’t read it. Not yet. But when he rose to head for bed, his tea forgotten on the coffee table, his hold on the journal didn’t loosen.

CHAPTER TWO
    T he smell of freshly baked chocolate-chip cookies wafted through the air as the oven timer dinged. Megan set down the picture in her hands and reached for her worn red oven mitts. She’d have to be careful she didn’t burn herself through one of the many holes. She kept meaning to buy a new pair but always forgot.
    “Is it my turn now?”
    Megan turned and saw Emma standing in the kitchen doorway. Her hopeful tone made Megan smile. It wasn’t quite the laughter from her dream, but it was close enough. She could hear the other two girls laughing at some cartoon they were watching in the family room. They’d already made their cookies.
    After two years of searching, all Megan had wanted was to have Emma back home. Even when everyone told her she should move on, she’d never given up, never forgotten that her baby girl was out there somewhere. To find out that Emma had lived only twenty minutes away on a farm with the older couple who had kidnapped her…Megan wasn’t sure she’d ever forgive herself for not looking hard enough.
    Megan bent down as she opened the oven door and then turned her head as a heat wave engulfed her face. One day she’d learn tolet that initial heat burst escape first. When Emma’s unbound, curly golden hair swung out of her line of sight for a brief moment, Megan’s breath hitched and held until her daughter’s chubby cheek pressed against her arm.
    “Careful, honey, this is hot,” Megan cautioned as she pulled out the tray of cookies and set it on the cooling stand.
    “Can I make my cookies now?” Emma pulled a stool over to the island counter and climbed on it. A new batch of dough sat in a bowl with an open bag of mixed candies beside it.
    When Megan had come downstairs after her shower, the three girls were sitting at the kitchen table arguing over which cookie to make. Emma held firm to the cookbook