Chapter 9: Chapter Three

The galley was a paperback with a plain white cover and a stamp on the front: UNCORRECTED PROOF.

The title was The Allowance: Regulated Love for Real Marriages.

The author line said Dr. Christian Pelham and Dr. Pia Hellstrom.

I opened it on Shanna's kitchen table, with Luther and my sister standing on either side of me.

Chapter Three began on page forty-one.

It was titled "The Hospital Night."

It began with a woman in a bed at four in the morning, and a sentence I knew.

I keep reaching for my stomach to check on the baby.

Then it went on, for nine pages.

Everything I had said in that room was there.

The things I had said to Shanna, with my face in her sleeve, and the things I had not said aloud at all.

The line about the baby's room.

The line about the small yellow hat I had bought and put in a drawer.

The line about wanting to die a little, and then wanting to be held, and then being ashamed.

Every one of them was printed under his name, set in clean black type, with the words "Subject E." in front of them.

"This is my diary," I said.

"What?" Luther said.

"I wrote these in the notebook by my bed. I wrote them in a sketchbook, at night, in pencil, where nobody could see."

My voice sounded far away.

"He found them. He copied them. They're my words, exactly, with the commas."

Shanna took the book out of my hands very gently and set it down.

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