Chapter 7: The Weight of Good Days
The list had been bothering Ethan since the day he found it.
Not the name — he understood that now.
But the entries themselves.
The dates.
The careful notations beside each one.
*Ethan's work trip.
Evie's recital.
Christmas morning.*
He had read them as good days.
Days worth recording.
But the more he thought about it, the more he wondered if he had read them wrong.
He brought it up on a Saturday morning, three weeks after Mara came home.
She was at the kitchen table with her coffee and the sketchbook — she had started drawing again, small things, nothing dramatic, just the table and the window and once a very accurate drawing of their neighbor's dog.
"Can I ask you about the list?" he said.
She looked up.
"Which part?"
"The entries.
The notes beside the dates." He sat down across from her.
"I assumed they were good days.
Days you wanted to remember."
Mara set her pencil down.
"They were days I got through," she said.
"Days I wasn't sure I could get through, and then I did.
So I wrote them down."
He absorbed that.
"Your work trip," she said.
"Evie was sick that week.
Ear infection.
I was up four nights in a row, and I was already — I was already not well.
And I just kept thinking, get to Friday.
Get to Friday.
And I did.
So I wrote it down."
"I didn't know she was sick that week."
"You were in Chicago."
"You didn't tell me."
"You would have felt guilty.
And there was nothing you could do from Chicago." She picked up her pencil again, turned it in her fingers.
"So I handled it.
And I wrote it down."
"And Christmas morning?"
A pause.
"That was a hard one.
For reasons I'm still working through with Daniel.
But I got through it.
We opened presents and Evie was happy and you made the eggs the way she likes them.
And I sat at that table and I thought — I'm still here.
I made it to another one." She looked at the table.
"So I wrote it down."
Ethan looked at the table too.
The same table.
The one from the drawings.
"I thought they were good days," he said again.
Quietly.
Not defending himself.
Just sitting with how wrong he had been.
"Some of them were both," Mara said.
"A day can be hard to survive and also worth surviving.
Those aren't opposites."
He nodded.
"I want to show you something," she said.
She got up and went to the drawer — the same drawer, behind where the prescription bottle had been.
She came back with the list.
She unfolded it and laid it flat on the table between them.
"Read the last entry," she said.
"The one before Daniel's name."
He looked.
The second-to-last entry was a date from seven months ago.
Beside it, in Mara's careful handwriting: *Ethan stayed home.
We watched the old movie.
He fell asleep on the couch and I covered him with the blanket and I thought — maybe.*
He read it twice.
"Maybe what?" he asked.
"I don't know exactly.
Maybe things could be different.
Maybe I could say something.
Maybe there was still time." She refolded the list along its original creases.
"I didn't say anything that night.
You woke up and went to bed and I stayed up and wrote it down instead."
"I remember that night," he said.
"Do you?"
"The movie with the train.
The old one your father liked."
"Yes."
"I remember thinking you seemed — lighter.
That night.
I remember thinking something was different and then I fell asleep and didn't ask you about it."
Mara looked at him.
"I know," he said.
"I know."
She put the list back in the drawer.
Not behind the prescription bottle this time — the bottle was gone, replaced with a new one with a new date, managed now by a doctor who knew the full picture.
She put the list near the front of the drawer, where it was easy to reach.
"Daniel asked me something this week," she said, sitting back down.
"He asked me to think about what I would need — specifically — to feel like I was in the picture again.
Not at the edge.
In the center."
"What did you say?"
"I said I didn't know yet.
But that I was starting to be able to imagine it." She picked up her pencil.
"That's new.
The imagining part."
"That sounds like progress."
"He said the same thing." She looked at the sketchbook.
"I drew something yesterday.
Do you want to see it?"
"Yes."
She turned the book around.
It was the kitchen table.
Their kitchen table, with the two coffee mugs and the morning light coming through the window.
Two chairs.
Both occupied.
Both people fully in the frame.
Ethan looked at it for a long time.
"It's not finished," Mara said.
"I haven't done the faces yet."
"Take your time," he said.
She pulled the book back and picked up her pencil.
Outside, Evie was in the backyard, talking to herself in the serious, elaborate way four-year-olds narrate their own games.
May you like
Her voice came through the window in bright, unworried bursts.
Mara started drawing.
