Chapter 3: What the Second Notebook Said
Nobody moved.
The phone buzzed a second time against the counter.
Dr.
Anita Reeves.
The name sat there, lit and patient, like it had been waiting for exactly this moment.
Her Father picked it up.
"Don't." Her Husband's voice cracked on the single word.
The Father answered it anyway.
He didn't speak.
He just listened.
His free hand rested flat on the counter, and the room watched it slowly close into a fist.
"I'll call you back," he said finally, and set the phone down.
He didn't look at his son-in-law.
He looked at his daughter.
"She's been trying to reach you for three weeks."
The Pregnant Wife pressed her back against the wall.
"They take my phone at night."
"That's not—" Her Husband stopped himself.
"Not what?" the Father said.
"Not true?"
The Mother-in-Law moved between them.
"This is a family matter.
You have no right to come into our home and—"
"I'm taking my daughter out of your home." He said it the way a man says something he decided before he walked through the door.
"The only question is whether I do it quietly or with police in your driveway."
The Mother-in-Law's chin lifted.
"You wouldn't dare."
He was already walking down the hallway.
Her Husband followed.
"There's nothing in that room.
She's confused.
She gets confused."
The Father opened the bedroom door.
It was a plain room.
Neat in the way rooms are neat when someone has been told, repeatedly, to keep it that way.
He stood in the doorway and scanned it without touching anything.
"Where?" he asked his daughter, who had followed them both.
She crossed to the closet.
Reached up to the shelf above the hanging clothes.
Behind a folded blanket that had been her grandmother's — the one thing in the room that was entirely hers — she pulled out a second notebook.
Thicker than the first.
The cover worn soft at the corners.
She held it against her chest for a moment.
Then she handed it to her father.
He opened it.
The first entry was dated fourteen months ago.
Three weeks after the wedding.
He read without speaking.
A full minute passed.
Then another.
Her Husband leaned in the doorway with his arms crossed.
"Whatever she wrote in there, she wrote it when she was upset.
You can't take that seriously.
She exaggerates when she's upset."
The Father turned a page.
"There are photographs taped in here."
The Husband's arms dropped.
"She took photographs." The Father's voice had gone very still.
"Dated.
Timestamped.
With notes beside each one." He looked up.
"You told the doctor she walked into a door."
"She did."
"You wrote it down first.
Right here.
The day before the appointment." He turned the notebook so his son-in-law could see his wife's handwriting.
"She wrote what you were going to say before you said it.
So she'd know what story she was supposed to confirm."
The Mother-in-Law appeared at the end of the hallway.
"Give that to me."
"No."
"That is private property inside my house—"
"Your son's name is in here eleven times." He closed the notebook.
"Mine is in here once.
On the last page." His voice broke, just slightly, on the next words.
"She wrote: *If something happens to me, give this to my father.*"
The Pregnant Wife made a sound she'd been holding back for a long time.
Her Husband took a step toward her.
"Sweetheart—"
"Don't." Her father moved between them.
One step.
That was all it took.
The Husband stopped.
Outside, a car door closed.
Footsteps on the front path.
The Father had made a call of his own before he'd walked into this house.
May you like
He just hadn't mentioned it.
The doorbell rang.
