Chapter 2: What the Sketchbook Knew
Ethan didn't answer Evie's question.
He couldn't.
He walked out of the room, stood in the hallway, and pressed his back against the wall until his legs felt steady enough to hold him.
A nurse passed.
Then another.
He didn't move.
He kept thinking about the sketchbook.
One drawing in particular.
Evie at the kitchen table, crayon in hand, laughing.
Ethan beside her, smiling.
And at the far left corner of the page, so small you could almost miss her — a woman's hand resting on the counter.
Just the hand.
No face.
No body.
Mara had drawn herself out of her own family.
He went back to the house that afternoon and looked harder this time.
Behind the prescription bottle, there was a folded piece of paper.
A list, written in Mara's handwriting.
Dates.
Amounts.
Notes beside each one — *Ethan's work trip.
Evie's recital.
Christmas morning.*
Every entry was something he remembered as a good day.
He hadn't known she was counting them like a person counting the last of something.
At the bottom of the list, one line was different from the rest.
It wasn't a date.
It wasn't an amount.
It was a name.
A name Ethan had never seen written in his wife's handwriting before.
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What Ethan found next changed everything he thought he knew about his marriage.
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