Mountain Secrets by Elizabeth Goddard (good books to read for teens txt) 📕

to spend time organizing the attic. Switch out decor downstairs again. Carefully, Jewel stepped so she didn’t make too much noise and worry Tracy, Katy and Meral all over again.

She swiped away the dust along the wall looking for that plank. Could it have been so long ago that she couldn’t remember exactly where she’d hidden it away? It should be here, yet the plank wouldn’t budge.

Propping the flashlight just right, Jewel used both fingers, sliding her fingernails between the boards. She dug her fingertips into the crack as leverage and tried to work the plank loose until she finally felt the slightest shift in the board.

Pain stung her finger. Jewel snatched her hand back. A sliver had caught under the skin. She spotted a nail on the floor and picked it up. Poking it into the crack, she twisted and angled it, working it back and forth until the board shifted enough so she could grab it.

There.

She tugged and twisted the plank that fought back. It didn’t seem to want to give up its resting place after twenty-some years. That, she understood. She had been comfortable, too, letting her secret stay hidden. That was until Meral and Buck had shown up. Now she had to look back in order to move forward.

Finally, she removed the cranky old board entirely.

And there inside the hole in the wall rested the box.

Emotion punched her stomach so hard she gasped. She hadn’t considered the effect this would have on her. Tears spilled down her cheeks. Long pent-up anguish, regret and pain poured out of her. She had never allowed herself to give up the grief, to cry over her mistake, to truly put it behind her. Until now, she had never regretted her decision. She hadn’t allowed herself the luxury.

Now, twenty years later, she realized her mistake. She’d been young and impressionable and reckless when she’d left her wealthy family behind for love. Left her dreams and career pursuits behind.

But she’d met Silas Caraway, and it seemed as though all the plans she’d made were nothing compared to loving him. She’d known that Silas wasn’t the kind of man her family expected her to marry. Her parents had had big plans for her in terms of carrying on the Simmons family name and legacy in Simmons Diamonds.

Jewel had been warned that once she left, she wouldn’t be allowed to come back. She wouldn’t see a dime from the estate and wouldn’t be assisted if needed. Shocked by the pronouncement, she’d been terrified of the risks her future held, yet she hadn’t been able to turn her back on love. So Jewel had stolen a valuable family heirloom when she’d left, keeping it tucked away in hiding as a safety net.

Just in case.

What if things hadn’t worked out with Silas in Alaska?

She’d been willing to give up her lavish lifestyle for love. Believed what she had with her husband was strong. But it never hurt to have a backup plan. Except she’d never told her husband that she’d kept anything belonging to her family. After what they’d put her through, it would have seemed to him as though she hadn’t trusted him enough. He would have seen her need to have a backup plan as proof that she’d expected their marriage to fail.

How that would have hurt him. She hadn’t wanted him to ever know. Therefore she couldn’t keep the diamond in a safe-deposit box in the bank of a small town, because he would have found out eventually. She’d found an adequate hiding place in the big old house.

She tugged out the box, her heart pulsing erratically.

After wrapping her fingers around it, she opened the box and stared at the Krizan Diamond, a glistening yellow stone cut from one of the Golconda diamonds—an ancient mine in India. The diamond had been handed down through the generations in Jewel’s mother’s family.

How it still shimmered a vivid yellow, the color increasing the value of the 20.25-carat stone.

Though only one of many such family diamonds, how silly of her to take it. Had someone reported it stolen? Was insurance filed on it? Doubtful she could have ever sold it without everyone knowing the truth of her crime unless she dipped her fingers into the black market somehow and found a collector. Odd the things people did when they were young.

Today, she never would have done such a thing. But she was older and wiser.

This had to be why someone wanted to kill her. It was valuable enough to be a powerful temptation to someone greedy and ruthless. But who knew she’d taken it? Who knew she had it? She suspected her mother had known she took the diamond, but Jewel couldn’t see her mother telling anyone, not when it might get Jewel into trouble. Jewel had always imagined that when she’d seen her mother peeking out the window as Jewel had left with Silas, she’d seen the glimmer of approval in her eyes; had chosen to believe that her mother would have wanted her to have this security.

But maybe she had fooled herself. How could she have been so naive to hope that no one else in the family would realize she’d taken it?

Did her sister know?

Doubts filled her about the man Meral loved and had married. Had Meral told Buck about the diamond?

Her hands trembled.

But then it hit her afresh. She still possessed the Krizan Diamond—a stone worth millions—and all it represented to her were fear and guilt. The diamond’s value, the danger she likely had brought on herself by possessing it, struck her like a bolt from the sky and singed her skin. She dropped it, letting it fall into the box.

She placed the rudimentary container back into its hiding place.

Jewel pushed the plank into place and quietly shoved boxes in front of the wall. If someone were searching in here, it would be easy enough to discover where she had disturbed the dust. She’d need to clean the entire attic to cover her