Free The Fifth Kingdom by Caridad Piñeiro Page B

minefield of volatile thoughts and emotions, including ones about Bill.
    He stepped aside gallantly to let her down the hall. As she passed the room her father had taken for his own, she realized he had already made himself comfortable there in a recliner. His head was buried in the Codex Mendoza once again, his face alight with joy as if rediscovering an old friend.
    She smiled indulgently and continued on to the living room and the parcel that sat on the coffee table. She took a spot before it together with Bill. The sofa was on the smallish side, which meant that with each movement their shoulders or arms brushed against one another, creating that unnerving skitter in her insides. She drove it back even as Bill efficiently cut away the twine, removed the kraft paper and then sliced the packing tape around all the edges. He stopped there, clearly expecting that she would continue with the unveiling.
    She laid her hands on the flaps of the box. They shook and her palms were wet with sweat. Her heart took up a staccato beat inside her chest that refused to slow down. Would it be like a jack-in-the-box, springing up to scare the shit out of her but doing no real damage? Or would it be more fatal, like a Pandora’s box releasing plague and destruction?
    Considering her mother, a mix of the two was highly possible. Despite that, she carefully pulled open the flaps on the box and peered within.

Chapter Nine
    The first item was a journal with an embossed leather cover that had clearly seen its share of handling. She lifted the journal out of the box to discover that the pages were stuffed with so many other papers and objects, the diary could not close. The cover jutted at nearly a forty-five degree angle from the thickness of the pages in relation to the binding.
    Beneath that massive tome was another journal and although it was two inches thick and small compared to the first, the rich patina on the face of it indicated that this journal, too, had been well-handled.
    She placed both journals on the coffee table, uncertain which one to open first.
    “Have you ever seen these before?” Bill asked and his question prompted a memory of Miranda sitting at the kitchen table beside her, meticulously writing notes in a book while Deanna did homework.
    “Miranda used to write all the time in diaries like this one,” she advised and gestured to the smaller of the two journals.
    Almost as if aware that she couldn’t muster the strength to open the book on her own, Bill placed his hand on the cover and asked, “May I?”
    Her mouth suddenly dry, she licked her lips and in a scratchy voice replied, “Please do.”
    Without lifting the book from the table, Bill flipped open the cover to reveal the first entries.
    Images and memories assailed her at the neat script which formed letters obviously written in code. A familiar cipher that she hadn’t seen in over fourteen years.
    “What is this?” Bill said as he ran a blunt finger along the lines of text on the page, tracing the letters in what would appear as nonsensical words to him.
    In a soft voice, she explained. “When I was younger I read about the Navajo Wind Talkers and became fascinated with how they had used their language as a cipher during the World War. My mother and I decided to create our own code to communicate. It was simple, but it made me feel mysterious to exchange little notes with her or even the shopping list to surprise my dad with a special dinner.”
    Those had been the good days when Miranda had still possessed some motherly instinct.
    “It’s nice that you have those memories of your mom.” There was a wistfulness in his voice that snagged her attention.
    “You must have similar memories.”
    His gray eyes darkened to the slate of storm clouds and his features hardened to granite. “My parents abandoned me. Then I went from foster home to foster home, each one worse than the one before for the most part. I try not to remember.”
    Wanting to offer