Chapter 8 — The Things You Never Asked

I put my hand flat beside the crossed-out name.

Another sentence formed beneath it.

Maisie asked Nora whether tomorrow would be a school day.

The new name remained clear.

"Is it changing the story?" Vivian asked.

"I don't know."

I wasn't going to give her certainty I didn't have. We watched until the page stopped moving, then photographed both lines.

"You should go back," I said. "Check on her."

Vivian turned to the last page and picked up my pen.

I am going home with my husband.

The ink disappeared.

"You know why that didn't work."

She looked at the empty paper.

"Write what you're choosing," I said. "Only your part."

She started again, got as far as I am, and stopped.

I could hear the refrigerator running behind us.

"I'm afraid that if I go, I'll never find you again."

"Maisie shouldn't have to wait for you to settle that."

Vivian put the pen down. Shame crossed her face, followed by something less easy to name.

We tried to call Nora from her charged phone. The saved number reached a stranger. My old number did the same.

No ordinary connection crossed with us.

For the rest of the night, the book showed harmless fragments: breakfast, a lost mitten, Nora fastening a coat. I copied them with the times they appeared. The crossed-out line stayed visible above them.

By morning, I had stopped thinking of the book as empty just because I couldn't read what it was doing.

Vivian sat opposite me, examining the back cover.

"This mark wasn't here yesterday."

A blue curve had surfaced in the cloth, directly above the missing crescent. I drew its shape in the notebook.

"It appeared at the shop too," she said. "Before I left."

We went through our separate accounts, matching the words, the warmth, the same damaged corner. When she described putting the book on the townhouse dresser, I told her where it had been in my apartment.

One thing, appearing on either side of a door neither of us understood.

At nine, Ben called. I told him we were still working out what to do. I also called Morgan and asked for a personal day.

"Everything okay?"

"Something I need to handle. My sample notes are all in the folder."

"Handle it," she said.

Vivian heard that exchange.

"You could lose the job."

"I asked for a day."

"I could cover what you earn until—"

She stopped. Her own accounts had opened to errors or blank pages. Wren House didn't exist here.

I didn't enjoy watching her discover it. I wanted her to stop treating my life as a problem money would solve.

"I need some air," I said.

My mother was already nearby buying groceries. I called and asked whether she could meet me for coffee.

Before I left, Vivian picked up the spare phone.

"I'll photograph anything that changes."

"Thank you."

At the café, I told Mom there was someone from a painful relationship staying temporarily at my apartment. I didn't tell her about the book.

She didn't ask me to explain the years she hadn't seen.

"Do you want her there?"

"I want to help her leave."

Mom nodded slowly.

"Those can feel like the same thing until you ask the question."

We sat for twenty minutes. I checked my messages twice. Vivian had sent a photograph of the unchanged page.

Mom drove me back with a bag of groceries and a promise to answer if I called.

Vivian was outside, looking up and down the block.

When she saw us, her gaze went first to my mother's hand resting on my arm.

"Where were you?"

I took the grocery bag from the back seat.

"I told you."

She stepped in front of me.

"You just left me there while you—"

"Move, Vivian."

She stared at me.

"This is my mother. And you don't question her about where I've been."

Mom stayed beside the car.

Vivian's face changed. She recognized Ruth from the photograph a moment too late.

"I'm sorry," she said.

Mom accepted it with a nod, then looked at me.

"Call if you need anything."

I kissed her cheek. Vivian moved aside before I asked again.

Upstairs, there were two plates on the folding table and a bag from the grocery store at the corner. Vivian had used part of the cash to buy smoked salmon and the expensive crackers I used to like.

"You haven't eaten," she said.

"I don't eat fish."

"You loved this."

"Julian's body did. Mine doesn't. I get sick."

She looked down at the plates.

"It's such a small thing."

"There are a lot of small things."

She pushed the plate away from my place and washed her hands before touching the groceries Mom had brought.

Then she sat down.

"There was no voice telling me to stop you outside. No book making me ask where you'd been. I just wanted to know who had you when I didn't."

I kept unpacking the bag.

"I know."

"I don't know how to stop feeling it."

"You stopped blocking the door. Start there."

She nodded, looking at the space between our chairs.

The book snapped shut.

We both turned.

Blue light leaked from the binding. I opened it carefully, holding the cover down when the pages began to turn.

The harmless fragments were gone.

In their place, a paragraph formed around a sentence I recognized.

The husband had left his appointed ending. The wife had followed. With neither present to bear the loss, the story had turned to what they had made together.

"Maisie," Vivian said.

I turned to the back.

The faint warning had darkened. Beneath it were lines that had been hidden by the cloth until now.

The one who keeps the passage may release the one it holds.

No claim may be kept upon the released.

No crossing may follow them.

Vivian read it twice.

On the facing page, dates appeared in narrow columns. Years out of order. A small drawing of the bookshop counter stood between them, the same counter shown from opposite sides.

"Keeping the passage," I said. "That's what the woman does."

Vivian touched the first line without speaking.

"Could we change those words?"

I shook my head.

"I tried writing that I'd recover. That you'd trust me. The ink wouldn't stay. It kept what I actually did."

She looked at the two departure sentences on the last page.

"So this isn't an offer we can bargain down."

"We need to ask the woman who lives with it."

I copied the conditions beside our photographs. If another page vanished, I wanted a record of what it had said, not what we wished it had promised.

I turned back to the new paragraph.

Below it was a drawing of a little girl asleep beside her rabbit.

I knew the tilt of that head. I knew the hand folded under her cheek.

As we watched, the child's face faded to white.