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Jim, but something in me refused to believe he was gone. He couldn’t be.
    We sat in silence for a few moments as my mind raced.
    â€œMiss Ellen, we each hold a story the other desperatelywants.” Steele closed the book and held it like a winning ticket. “You tell me yours—and I will give you Jim’s.”
    â€œHow did you get the journal?” I blurted. “Did you see him? Do you know where he is?”
    Steele smiled. “You have the mind of a journalist.”
    â€œAnd you have the heart of a devil.”
    â€œThe choice is yours, Miss Ellen.” He shrugged. “You may have your privacy or your answers, but you can’t have it both ways.”
    How could he? How could he sit there holding my heart as ransom? What kind of man does that?
    No, there was no way I’d trust him with any of my secrets. Clearly, he had every intention of exposing them on the front page of the New York Times . My life would be ruined.
    Sensing my hesitation, Steele slipped the journal back into his jacket pocket and stood.
    But this was Jim, my Jim. My life already was ruined. I needed answers, and though Steele was obviously a poor excuse for a man, he was a skilled journalist. If there was any information to be had, he’d find it, as surely as he’d found me.
    â€œFine,” I exhaled in defeat. “I’ll do it … on one condition. You can’t use any of Jim’s journal in your piece.” It was bad enough Steele had read Jim’s private thoughts and I would be reading them too. I owed it to Jim to protect his innermost self, even if that meant exposing mine.
    Steele considered the request. “ All of your story?”
    â€œYes.” I held out my hand for the journal, willing to tell him anything, everything, just to have it. “Whatever you want.”

    He pulled it from his pocket and flipped it open to the ribbon. In one quick swipe he ripped out the yellowed page he’d just read. The sound tore my heart as though it were Jim himself we were dissecting. I suppose in some way we were.
    He laid the ragged page in my palm, a drop of water to someone dying of thirst. “Surely you didn’t think I’d give you the whole book up front?”
    â€œSurely you can give me something I don’t already know.” I looked at him, desperate for more.
    Turning to the front pages, he tore out the first entry and handed it to me before slipping the book back inside his jacket. “Consider it a down payment. But you owe me, Miss Ellen. Remember that.”
    He pulled a few newspaper clippings from his satchel and laid them on the table. “Some samples of my work for the Times . One on the Empress based on my Rimouski interviews and a few on the Titanic from a few years ago.”
    Then, donning his hat, he tipped it to me like the gentleman he was not. “I will be back tomorrow at ten for our interview.”
    I didn’t see him leave. Didn’t notice the fire die or even hear Lily until she put Aunt Geraldine’s throw over my shoulders and eased me into the chair. I don’t know how long I’d been standing alone in that room staring at Jim’s cramped scrawl. Seeing, but not reading, his words as they slowly faded with the light.

Chapter Seven
    COLD RAIN TAPPED AT THE WINDOWS as I sat in bed, the torn pages trembling in my fingers. Jim’s journal. His private thoughts. It felt wrong to read them and, yet, impossible not to. Perhaps they’d have the answers I longed for. If nothing else, they were at least Jim’s words. As Steele read them earlier, I could almost hear Jim’s deep voice speaking them inside my heart. A flicker of him—just enough to dispel the dark thoughts that threatened to pull me under.
    I brought the papers closer to the bedside candle’s light. I’d been so struck by seeing Jim’s journal, at hearing my name read from it, it was only now as I reread that first