Chapter 6: What Marcus Knew
I called Marcus back from the driveway, with the front door still closed behind me.
He picked up on the second ring.
"Thank you for calling," he said.
He sounded careful.
Measured.
Like a man who had rehearsed the first sentence and wasn't sure about the rest.
"Your message said there was something else," I said.
"What is it?"
A pause.
"I want to say first — I didn't know how deep it went until I was going through everything after we separated.
I found the letters to Andrew.
I found the letter of yours she'd kept.
But I also found something else."
"Marcus."
"A notebook," he said.
"She kept a notebook.
I don't know for how long.
It goes back at least two years."
Two years.
Eliza had only moved to my neighborhood eight months ago.
"What kind of notebook?" I asked.
"The kind where someone writes down what they're thinking when they can't say it out loud." He paused again.
"Clara, she wrote about your marriage.
Regularly.
She wrote about arguments you'd told her about.
Things you'd confided in her.
She wrote about what she would do differently.
How she would handle things.
How she thought Andrew deserved better."
My back was against the car.
The cold metal through my coat.
"She used things I told her," I said.
"Yes."
"Things I told her in confidence.
When I was upset, or scared, or just — talking to my sister."
"Yes."
I closed my eyes for a moment.
Every difficult conversation I had ever brought to Eliza's kitchen table moved through my mind in a single long line.
The argument Andrew and I had about money in our second year.
The time I had cried to her about feeling invisible.
The months when things between us had been genuinely hard and she had held my hand and told me that every marriage goes through rough patches.
She had been taking notes.
"Do you still have it?" I asked.
"Yes.
I didn't know what to do with it.
I almost threw it away, but it felt wrong.
Like it wasn't mine to destroy."
"Can you bring it to me?"
"That's why I messaged you."
We agreed on a time.
I went back inside.
Andrew was washing up the coffee cups.
He turned when he heard the door.
"Who was that?"
"Marcus." I put my phone on the counter.
"He has a notebook.
Eliza kept a notebook about our marriage.
He's bringing it over this afternoon."
Andrew set down the cup he was holding.
"How long?"
"At least two years."
He didn't say anything.
He turned back to the sink and stood there with both hands on the edge of it, looking out the window at the garden.
"Andrew."
"I'm all right." His voice was even.
"I just need a moment."
I let him have it.
Marcus arrived at two o'clock.
He was thinner than I remembered from the wedding, and he had the look of a man who had been sleeping badly for months.
He handed me a plain brown notebook at the door without coming inside.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"I don't know what else to say.
I'm sorry I didn't see it sooner.
I'm sorry I didn't—" He stopped.
"I just want you to know that I think what she did was wrong.
And I think you deserved better from her."
"Thank you for bringing this," I said.
He nodded and left.
I sat at the kitchen table with the notebook in front of me.
Andrew sat across from me.
Neither of us opened it immediately.
"You don't have to read it today," he said.
"I know."
"Or at all, if you don't want to."
"I know that too." I put my hand flat on the cover.
"But I think I need to know the full shape of it.
I think not knowing would be worse."
I opened it.
The first entry was dated twenty-six months ago.
Three months before Eliza's marriage to Marcus had started to fall apart.
Three months before any of us knew there was trouble.
May you like
It started with six words that made the room very quiet.
*She doesn't know how lucky she is.*
