"Mother!" yelled
Teresa yelled from the other side of the house.

"What is it, Teresa?" answered a voice from a
not-so-nearby room. "I’m just about to head out to get dinner."

"Mother, come quickly," yelled back Teresa, "come
and see what I found!"

With a sigh, Mrs. Brisby headed towards the back of her
cinderblock home while listening to the sounds of her three other children
rushing into the room to see what was going on as well. They each reached the
doorway and scrambled inside before she had even passed halfway through the
warm, brightly-lit front room. She wasn’t in any particular hurry, though she
was curious as to what Teresa was so excited about.

"Look what I found!" Teresa said, just as loudly and
shrilly as she had when Mrs. Brisby had been on the other side of the house.
All of Jonathan’s things had been wrapped in a bit of cloth and put into the
corner of her small room. The only other furnishings were her bed and a small
cabinet. A small window allowed minimal light. She had periodically spent time
in this drab room with her husband’s old things and just remembered, but those
times had become few and far between. She had often wondered if she was just
learning to accept Jonathan’s death or if she was beginning to forget him.

Among Jonathan’s things now sprawled out on the floor, were some
new items she had never seen before. Teresa pulled from this pile an old,
leather-bound book as big as both of her paws and well worn. There was a small,
faded inscription on the front that read "The Diary of Jonathan
Brisby" with a bit of golden border about it that looked like thorns. Mrs.
Brisby quickly took it in her paws and stared at it. Its discolored brown cover
was soft, and it felt warm and comforting. In all the time she had spent with
Jonathan’s things, holding his clothes while feeling their texture and taking
in their scent, she had never seen this before. She carefully opened it—it was
obviously old and well used; many pages were close to falling out. Inside on
the first page were the words, "Jonathan Brisby’s Personal Diary for My
Dearest Wife."

A page did fall out of the book, but when Mrs. Brisby went to
pick it up, it was folded and not like the rest of the pages. She opened it up
and saw a drawing of herself done in charcoal. Mrs. Brisby was amazed. She had
never known that Jonathan could draw so well. The picture looked exactly like
her, save that it was done when she had been a few years younger. Down at the
bottom was written in Jonathan’s large, curvy handwriting, "My secret
love, but my secret keeps her away."

Mrs. Brisby remembered that when they had first met he seemed to
know her quite well, although they had never met. He must have been watching
her for awhile and had done this drawing. She felt tears welling up in her eyes
for all the memories that flooded back in and the feeling that she would never
be able to tell him how she had felt about him again. The wound had been
re-opened, but with it came a cleansing, for as she read the second page of
Jonathan’s diary through tear-blurred eyes, the story of how they met came back
to her. "We met near the edge of the field, and everything was perfect.
The light wind blew through her fur and her eyes looked into the depths of me;
probing my very soul, almost to the point where I was afraid that she would
find out my greatest secret, and then what would she think of me…"

Suddenly, a question struck her. "Why were you in here
looking through your father’s things?"

Teresa looked at first surprised, then a bit embarrassed as she
looked from Jonathan’s things to her mother to Cynthia.

"Well, I didn’t really find it myself, or here for that
matter," she said, as if confessing some crime. "Cynthia told me that
she had felt there might be something of father’s at the rat’s old place. I
told her that going there would be too dangerous, but I guess my curiosity got
the best of me." A smile broke out on her face that she tried to repress.

Mrs. Brisby had noticed that Cynthia seemed to have attained a
knack for finding things and having intuition about certain matters. She
suspected a special ability arising in her, but she did not want to jump to
conclusions.

Before Mrs. Brisby could even think about reprimanding Teresa
for pulling such a dangerous stunt, Martin spoke up. "Can we read it,
mom?"

"Yeah, can we?" chimed in Cynthia in her singsong
voice, excited about the whole situation.

"No," said Teresa resolutely, "let’s leave mother
alone and let her read it first." She filed the three other children out
of the room so Mrs. Brisby could be alone. Smiling to herself and thinking what
wonderful children she had, she opened the diary to page two and began reading.