Chapter 7: The Notebook
900 Words
Roman found it again on Saturday morning.
He had moved it from the closet to his nightstand the day he discovered it and had not touched it since. It sat there all week next to his phone charger, small and dark green, the cover worn soft at the corners. Isabella had not asked about it. He had not mentioned it.
She went to brunch at eleven. The apartment went quiet.
He picked it up.
The cover felt the same as it had the first time. Soft and warm from a long time of being held. He opened it to the first page and read the first line and understood within thirty seconds that it was not a diary.
It was a log. A working document, written in her handwriting, in her voice, tracking the things she was managing. Which was, he was starting to understand, most everything.
The first several pages were contacts and preferences.
His parents' wedding anniversary, March fourteenth. A note beside it: send a card in advance. His mother prefers something with flowers, not abstract. His father: nothing sports-related, he finds it condescending.
Roman had missed the anniversary last year. Isabella had called, and the conversation had run long and the date had simply gone. His mother said it was fine when he called two days late. She always said it was fine.
He kept reading.
Felix Carrow: shellfish allergy. Prefers whiskey. Do not seat near Mercer at dinners. They have history neither will explain.
Board member Holt's wife is Patricia, who goes by Trish. Not Pat. She will not correct anyone ,but she will remember it.
Caterer note: confirm dietary requirements two weeks out. They need the extra time and will not ask for it.
He turned the page.
More of the same. Names, small details, the invisible infrastructure of every dinner and event he had attended in three years, and he walked away thinking it had gone well because he was good at these things. He had not been managing any of it. She had been managing all of it. He had just shown up.
He turned another page and the entries shifted.
A quote, copied out in full, from a book he did not recognize. Something about the particular loneliness of being in a room full of people who assume you are fine. No comment from her. Just the words, written down carefully like she wanted to keep them somewhere outside her own head.
Below it, a note to herself: order flowers this week. The good ones. You have been putting it off.
And below that, in slightly smaller letters: no one else is going to.
He read that twice. Then turned the page.
More logistical entries. A restaurant she wanted to try. A book someone had recommended. A reminder to call her father. No reason given. Then a gap, and then:
Roman worked until 3 a.m. again. Left dinner in the oven. He didn't eat it.
He stopped.
There was nothing in it except the fact of it. No frustration, no trailing off into something unsaid. Just the plain recording of something that has happened, set down the way you write things when you are trying to make sense of them by putting them somewhere solid.
He turned the page.
Three more routine entries. A client preference. A note about rescheduling something. And then, between two ordinary lines:
Isabella called the house line today. I didn't tell him.
Roman sat very still.
He read it again.
Then again.
Six words. A period. No explanation, no indication of when it had been written or how many times it had happened or what she had felt, standing in whatever room she had been standing in when she answered and heard that voice and decided, in the space of a few seconds, to say nothing.
He thought about how many times he had taken calls from Isabella. In his office, in the car, in the hallway outside the bedroom when he thought Sera was already asleep. He had told himself there was nothing to explain. He had believed that, mostly.
He did not know when Sera had stopped believing it.
He did not know how long she had been carrying that entry around in her head before she wrote it down.
He turned the page.
The next entry was the morning after.
I made his favorite breakfast anyway. He didn't notice. That's okay. I noticed.
Roman closed the notebook.
He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the floor. The apartment was quiet around him, the kind of quiet that had weight in it. He held the notebook in both hands without moving.
She had known about Isabella. She had written it down in six words and put it beside the catering notes and the anniversary reminders, and the next morning she had made his breakfast. Not as a performance. Not to make a point. Because she had wanted to, and she was still the person who did that kind of thing even when the person she was doing it for did not deserve it.
That's okay. I noticed.
His hands were not entirely steady. He noticed this from somewhere just outside himself, the way you notice small physical facts when your mind is somewhere it cannot fully process yet.
He sat there for a long time without putting on the notebook.
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- Writer
