Chapter 9: What the Notebook Contained
The notebook had forty-three pages.
Lorenzo read all of them that night, sitting in the chair beside his father's bed while Giovanni slept — a real sleep now, Dr.
Anselm had said, not the heavy chemical stillness that had passed for rest for two years.
Nora sat across the room.
Lorenzo had asked her to stay, and she had not questioned it.
She had brought tea, and she sat with her hands wrapped around the cup and watched the fire and listened to the occasional sound of a page turning.
At some point past midnight, Lorenzo set the notebook down.
"Mrs.
Gable has been skimming the care budget since the second year," he said.
"He documented every discrepancy he could observe.
Dates, amounts, what was and wasn't purchased." He paused.
"He also documented her communications.
She made phone calls from his room — she thought he was too sedated to register them.
He remembered every one."
"Who was she calling?"
"A man named Reeves.
He's a property attorney." Lorenzo looked at the notebook.
"My father's estate — this property, the Manhattan holdings — there are provisions in the family trust that activate if my father is declared legally incapacitated.
Mrs.
Gable has been in contact with Reeves for eighteen months.
They've been building a case for a formal incapacity declaration."
Nora set down her cup.
"She was going to have him declared incompetent," she said.
"And then the trust provisions would have transferred management of the estate assets to an appointed administrator.
Reeves, almost certainly, with Mrs.
Gable continuing to run the household under new, more favorable terms." Lorenzo's voice was even.
"My father would have had no legal standing to dispute anything.
He would have had no voice."
"Except he had the notebook."
"Except he had the notebook." Lorenzo looked at Giovanni sleeping.
"He couldn't get it out of the room.
He couldn't speak.
He couldn't call me.
So he wrote down everything he could, and he waited."
Nora thought of all the evenings she had sat beside the wheelchair and talked about Lily and Brody and the debts and the cold.
Giovanni listening with those dark, steady eyes.
Not helpless.
Not absent.
Present and recording and waiting for someone to walk through the door who might, eventually, be trusted with the truth.
"He trusted you first," Lorenzo said.
He was looking at her.
"Before I arrived.
Before any of this.
He trusted you."
"I just fed him properly," Nora said.
"No." Lorenzo shook his head.
"You saw him.
That's different." He looked down at the notebook in his hands.
"I didn't come often enough.
I told myself it was because the sight of him like that was — difficult.
But the truth is I let distance become easier than presence." He paused.
"He knew that.
He wrote it down."
"What did he write?"
Lorenzo was quiet for a moment.
"He wrote: *Lorenzo stays away because he cannot bear what he sees.
He thinks I am already gone.
He is wrong.
Tell him I am still here.*"
The fire settled.
Outside, the blizzard had finally quieted, and the silence of deep snow pressed against the windows.
"He wanted me to tell you," Nora said.
"Yes." Lorenzo set the notebook on the side table.
"He was waiting for someone to come into this room and actually see him.
And then he was waiting for that person to eventually meet me." He looked at her.
"He planned this.
As much as a man in his position could plan anything."
Nora looked at Giovanni's sleeping face.
The lines of it were softer now than they had been three months ago.
The medication leaving his system, Dr.
Anselm had said.
The real man surfacing.
"What happens now?" she asked.
"Now," Lorenzo said, "we deal with Reeves and Mrs.
Gable properly.
My father's legal team will move tomorrow.
The incapacity filing they were preparing will be countered with the notebook and the laboratory results." He paused.
"And Mrs.
Gable will be asked to answer some questions she is not going to enjoy."
"She'll deny everything."
"She'll try." He stood.
"But my father spent two years writing down exactly what she did, in his own hand, with dates and specifics.
And the sedative compound in that powder is not something that ends up there by accident." He moved toward the door.
"She made one mistake."
"What was that?"
Lorenzo looked back at her.
"She decided my father was already gone," he said.
"So she stopped being careful."
He left.
Nora stayed a little longer, watching Giovanni sleep.
After a while she leaned forward and said, very quietly, "He read it.
All of it."
May you like
Giovanni did not wake.
But his breathing shifted — just slightly — into something that sounded, unmistakably, like relief.
