CHAPTER 7
624 Words
Grace didn’t realize when she stopped breathing.
It happened somewhere between the third page…
and the line she read twice.
Then a third time.
Grace’s eyes move slower the deeper she gets into the notebook.
At first she looked professional. Calm. Interested even.
Then the pages kept turning.
And her expression slowly changed with each one.
I watched it happen from across the room.
The slight furrow between her brows.
The way her fingers tightened around the edge of the paper before smoothening it out instinctively.
The way she kept glancing up at me after certain lines before quickly looking back down again.
The room had gone too quiet.
Even the ticking clock sounded louder.
“You wrote all this?” she finally asks softly.
Her eyes stay on mine awaiting a reply but I stay silent.
Her eyes drift back to the page immediately.
There’s a long pause.
Too long.
Her grip tightened slightly on the notebook.
“…no visible distress,” she murmured under her breath, scanning the line again.
“Subject reports emotional detachment following incident…”
Clinical.
Controlled.
Too controlled.
She turned the page.
Slowly this time.
Her eyes moved faster than she wanted them to.
I thought I would feel something.
I didn’t.
Grace swallowed.
Further down—
the handwriting changed.
Not drastically.
But enough.
The letters pressed harder into the page.
The spacing tightened.
Like something underneath the surface had shifted.
“…planned,” she read quietly.
Her voice faltered.
She stopped.
Looked up.
I kept watching her every reaction. Calmly.
Not nervously.
Not anxiously.
Just… watching.
Grace forced her eyes back down to the page.
They thought it was the alcohol.
That part was easy.
Her throat went dry.
“…no,” she whispered, almost instinctively.
The room felt smaller.
She kept reading.
Even though something in her mind was already telling her to stop.
I didn’t feel anything when it happened.
Not before.
Not after.
Grace’s fingers tightened around the edge of the notebook.
I just wanted it to be quiet again.
Silence filled the room.
Real silence this time.
Not the kind Tera carried with her.
This one…pressed.
Grace lifted her head slowly.
“Tera…”
(I noticed she didn’t call me Alexandra)
Her voice wasn’t as steady as she wanted it to be.
“Did you write all of this… recently?” she asked.
No answer.
Of course not.
My fingers rested lightly on my laps.
Still.
Controlled.
Grace tried again, a bit more calculated this time.
“The incident you described here—”
She hesitated.
Just for a second.
“—this wasn’t the same accident, was it?”
Nothing.
Just those eyes.
Watching her the same way she had been watching me moments ago.
Grace felt it then.
Not fear.
Not yet.
Something colder.
The quiet realization…
that she might be the only one in the room who didn’t understand what was really happening.
Did she really want to understand. For all she knew all of it could be a lie just to scare her away.
Would she believe the words on paper?
I believe I've said I hated therapy but they're insistent on 'making me speak' when all I want is to dwell in this silence I've built.
"You’re my second therapist." I sign.
"What happened to the last one?" She asked, her voice shaky.
I picked up my pen.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Purposefully.
The scratching of ink against paper filled the silence between us echoing louder that the ticking of the clock.
I didn’t rush.
I never did.
Now was definitely not the time to rush, not for any reason.
When I was done, I turned the notebook toward her.
She read it.
“She asked too many questions.”
- Writer
