The Lost Riddle

Emily is still angry that Jay received credit for a science report without doing his share of the work. A stuck locker gives her a welcome distraction when Matthew finds a folded packet that has been painted over in one corner. Inside are a blank sheet of fine stationery, a laminated jumble of letters, a drawing of a sinking ship, and a riddle describing something that has never existed but always will. Whit helps them solve the riddle’s answer: tomorrow.

A watermark dates the stationery to about twenty-five years earlier. Because the high-school students used the middle-school building during renovations at that time, Emily and Matthew consult Mrs. Mays’s carefully preserved records. They learn that Odyssey Times editor Dale Jacobs occupied Emily’s locker for three years when he was a student.

Dale does not recognize the packet, but he remembers that members of his Creative Writers Club enjoyed codes and riddles. He notices that some letters are written on the laminated surface and others on the paper beneath it. Since the drawing shows a ship going underwater, he wets the card and wipes away the water-soluble outer ink. The remaining letters can be rearranged into a plea: “Please forgive my fault.” Dale also suggests that the blank sheet may contain lemon-juice writing.

Whit carefully heats the page, and hidden writing begins to appear. Matthew accidentally gets it too close to the flame and the paper burns, but they glimpse a cursive capital K followed by an e. The distinctive flourish leads them to Kenny Rutherford, a famous mystery novelist who once belonged to the Creative Writers Club. A yearbook reveals that Kenny won a short-story competition while Dale placed second - and that Dale’s story was titled “Tomorrow.”

Dale agrees to visit Kenny, though he cannot imagine what needs forgiving. Kenny confirms that he created the puzzle. Desperate to win the contest and its scholarship, he had secretly replaced the last page of Dale’s superior story with a ruined ending. After winning, he restored the original page before Dale received the manuscript. Too ashamed to confess directly or surrender the prize, Kenny hid the coded apology in Dale’s locker and waited for him to uncover the truth.

When Dale never confronted him, Kenny assumed that Dale had found the message and was silently punishing him. Every success in his writing career has carried the weight of that guilt. Dale is shocked but assures Kenny that his talent is real and that he likely would have succeeded anyway. Dale loves journalism and does not believe fiction would have remained his path. He forgives Kenny completely, freeing him from a burden he has carried for twenty-five years.

Back at Whit’s End, Emily sees the connection to her anger at Jay. Whit explains that withholding forgiveness can burden the injured person even when the offender never apologizes. Because Christ has forgiven her, Emily needs to extend forgiveness rather than wait for Jay to earn it. She decides to work on forgiving him - and jokes that she may still deliver the message as a riddle.