She stopped coming downstairs for breakfast. She wore the same gray hoodie three days in a row. When I knocked, she answered in syllables.
On day four, I went into her room to switch out her laundry and found a notebook under the bed.
I tried to keep her tethered with small lies.
"I'm just running errands," I would say, when I was actually buying ivory silk thread from the craft store because Eli had texted me a list.
On day four, I went into her room to switch out her laundry and found a notebook under the bed. Not the freshman one I'd thumbed through months ago, behind the paperbacks. A newer one. Sophomore year, in her tighter, angrier hand.
Names. Pages of them.
Girls who whispered when she walked past. Boys who posted things the week after Mason's funeral. Comments she had screenshotted and printed and tucked between the pages like pressed flowers gone black.
I lifted my phone and photographed the pages one by one.
I sat on her carpet and read every page.
That was the antagonist. Not a saleswoman. Not a window display.
It was a chorus my daughter had been carrying inside her ribs for two years.
I lifted my phone and photographed the pages one by one. Then I sent them to Eli. I don't know if any of this helps you, I typed. I just thought you should see what she's been carrying.
The three dots appeared and disappeared for a long time. I sat on her carpet and watched them, wondering what he could possibly do with a list of cruelties less than two weeks before a dance. Burn them, maybe. Read them and grieve. I had not sent them with a plan. I had sent them because I could not hold them alone.
On the morning of day six, I made the mistake of calling the shoe store from the kitchen.
