Chapter 5: Read It Out

Ilija laid the pad on the kitchen table in front of Baba Stana.

It was the old one, the yellow pad from my car, with a rubber band around it and a coffee ring on the cover.

I had not opened it in nineteen days.

It was seven in the morning.

I had not slept, and my coat smelled of ice.

Xander stood at the window with his back to the room.

Baba Stana had her hearing aids in, which I took as a sign.

"Read it," Ilija said.

He said it in English, politely, and he took the toothpick out of his mouth to do it.

"It's mine," I said.

"It's a working pad.

"It's court transcripts and grocery lists."

"Then you will not mind," Ilija said.

"I mind," I said.

"I'm not reading my notes to you."

"You wrote down the second of December," Ilija said.

"I want to know if you wrote down my cousin."

The room went quiet.

Xander did not turn around.

"I wrote the time," I said.

"I wrote it in my head, not on paper.

"There's nothing in that pad about the slip."

Ilija looked at me for a long moment.

He was a heavy man with a face that had been broken and set by people who did not care how it looked.

"Then there is nothing to fear in reading it," he said.

I picked up the pad.

I took the rubber band off.

My shorthand is quick and small, and nobody can read it but me and the two other court reporters in St. Louis County who trained where I did.

I turned the pages.

Hearing dates.

A grocery list.

A reminder that my mother's grave needed new flowers.

On the last used page, in a different pencil, there was a single line of shorthand, written fast, slanting down.

I remembered writing it.

It had been the morning after, at twenty to seven, on my way out, standing in the hall outside my father's study with my keys in my hand.

His door had been open an inch, and he had been on the phone.

I had written down what I heard, the way I write down everything, without thinking, because my hand does it.