Chapter 5: The Red Notebook
My brother's name is Paul.
He is four years older than me and he has never once in his life known when to stay out of something.
"Give us a minute," I said.
"She's really crying.
Like — not a little."
"Paul.
Give us a minute."
He looked between us, looked at the wooden box, looked at the two notebooks.
He had been at every Thanksgiving for eighteen years.
He had watched my mother take the photograph off the wall.
He knew enough to know what he didn't know.
"Okay," he said.
He went back inside and pulled the door mostly shut behind him.
My husband was already standing.
"I'll go," I said.
"We should both go."
"Let me go first.
Give her a few minutes alone with me."
He sat back down.
He picked up the blue notebook and held it without opening it.
I went inside.
Hannah was in the hallway, sitting on the floor with her back against the wall and the red notebook open across her knees.
Her face was wet.
She wasn't making any noise.
She was just reading, and the tears were coming down without her seeming to notice them.
I sat down on the floor beside her.
She didn't look up right away.
She finished the page she was on, then turned to the next one, then stopped.
"He wrote to me every year," she said.
"Yes."
"He wrote to her every year too."
"Yes."
She turned back a few pages and read something out loud.
Her voice was steady.
"*Hannah asked her teacher today why some families have two kids and some have one.
Her teacher said some families are just different sizes.
Hannah said she didn't think that was the real answer.
She's eight years old and she already knows when adults are avoiding the question.
I don't know where she gets that.*"
She closed the notebook.
"He saw me," she said.
"All this time.
He was watching and he was writing it down and he saw me."
"He did."
"Why didn't he just tell me?"
"Because I asked him not to."
She turned and looked at me.
"Every time he brought it up," I said, "I found a reason.
And he loved me enough to let me keep finding them.
That's not his fault.
That's mine."
Hannah looked at me for a long time.
"Why?" she said.
"Why did you need to keep it hidden?"
I had thought about this for eighteen years and I still didn't have a clean answer.
The honest answer was not clean at all.
"Because every time I thought about telling you," I said, "I had to think about her.
And I had gotten very good at not thinking about her.
And I was afraid that if I started, I wouldn't be able to stop."
Hannah was quiet.
"I was afraid of my own grief," I said.
"And I let that be more important than your right to know."
The hallway was narrow.
Through the wall I could hear the party — voices, someone's phone playing music, the scrape of a chair.
All those people still eating cake.
"I felt her," Hannah said.
"I know that sounds — I know how it sounds.
But I felt her.
Not like a ghost.
Just like a space beside me that was shaped like a person."
"You weren't imagining it."
"I know that now." She looked down at the notebook.
"I've known it for a long time.
I just didn't have a name for it."
I reached over and put my hand on her arm.
She didn't pull away.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"I know that's not enough.
I know it doesn't give you back the eighteen years of knowing.
But I am sorry, Hannah.
I am so sorry."
She leaned her head back against the wall.
"I don't want to be angry at you," she said.
"I really don't.
But I think I might be.
Not right now.
Later."
"That's okay."
"You're not going to try to talk me out of it?"
"No."
She exhaled slowly.
"Okay," she said.
"Okay."
We sat there on the floor of the hallway for a while.
Through the back door I could see my husband still at the table, the wooden box in front of him, not moving.
"I want to meet her," Hannah said.
I looked at her.
"I know I can't.
I know she's g*ne.
I just mean — I want to know her.
I want to know what she was like.
What she looked like.
What you thought she was going to be."
"We can do that," I said.
"I want to see every photograph."
"There aren't many."
"I want to see all of them."
"Okay."
"And I want to read both notebooks."
"They're yours."
She picked up the red notebook and held it against her chest.
"Tell me something about her," she said.
"Something small.
Something you haven't told anyone."
I thought for a moment.
"She had a dimple," I said.
"Just one.
On the left side.
You don't have it.
But when you were both sleeping, I used to look at you side by side and that was how I told you apart."
Hannah touched her own cheek on the left side, where the dimple wasn't.
"One dimple," she said.
"Just the one."
She nodded slowly, like she was filing it away somewhere safe.
Then she said, "I want to talk to Dad."
She stood up, smoothed her dress, and walked toward the back door.
I stayed on the floor for a moment longer.
Through the glass I watched her step outside and walk to the table and sit down across from her father.
I watched him look up at her.
May you like
I watched her say something I couldn't hear.
I watched him put his face in his hands.
