Chapter 7: Calm and Unwell

The court's doctor had a gray beard and a very gentle voice.

His office sat on the fourth floor of a quiet building, and there was a gray van with a clinic sticker parked outside the front door.

He did not offer me tea.

He offered me a leather chair and a blue folder.

"Mrs. Reeve," he said. "Before we begin, I would like you to look at something."

He opened the folder and slid a page across the desk.

It was a journal entry in blue ink, in a tight upright hand.

*I hear footsteps in the hall at night. Someone is moving my things. I think D. is trying to take Poppy. I cannot trust my own sister anymore.*

It was my handwriting.

Every loop was my loop.

I read the line twice.

"I never wrote this," I said.

"There are forty pages," the doctor said. "Dated from April."

"I have never kept a journal."

"Your sister found them in your closet," he said, and his voice stayed soft. "She was worried enough to bring them to your husband."

I looked at the page again and made myself read it slowly.

Everything on it was a lie, and every lie sounded like me.

My sister had copied my hand for twenty years.

She had signed my school notes when I was sick.

I held the page very still.

"May I ask you something, Doctor?" I said.

"Of course."

"Which of these entries mentions my husband bringing me tea?"

He flipped through the pages with a careful finger.

"None."

"Then it was written by someone who didn't want that recorded," I said. "Because I have thought about the tea every night for seven months."

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