Memories Without Him novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Phone

Vincent's POV

I had not meant to open her bag.

I went into the hall for water.

Her duffel sat open on the floor by the bedroom door, with the notebook sticking out of it.

I had stepped around it twice already.

The third time I picked the notebook up.

The first page said, Before I forget his name.

I read it standing in the dark with my heart going slowly and hard.

She had written down how I took my coffee.

Black, two sugars, and only when I was tired.

She had written that I hummed in the car when I thought nobody could hear.

It was always the same four bars of a song from before she was born.

She had written about the night after her parents' funeral, when I sat outside her door for six hours.

I had never known she heard me.

On the fourth page she had stopped writing about me and started writing about what she was afraid of.

I'll forget the smell of the garage. I'll forget the way he says my name, like it's an order he doesn't mind.

On the fifth page there was a line near the bottom, in a different pen.

Dad's last words in the car. Aldo was kneeling next to him. I can hear the first half. The second half is gone.

I read it three times.

Then I closed the book and put it back in the bag exactly as I had found it.

I went down to my study and locked the door.

I did not want to think what I was thinking.

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