The next one.
Mrs. W — Found a birthday card from your husband in the back of the desk drawer when I was
dusting. I didn’t read it. I put it on your nightstand. — C.
I looked up at her. She was watching me.
“These are my notes,” I said.
“Every single one,” she said. “Eight years. Four hundred and twelve Thursdays. I kept them all.”
I started going through them. My own messy handwriting, over and over. Out of dish soap. Found your earring. Faucet is dripping. Bought more lightbulbs. Receipt under the salt shaker.
And mixed in with the notes, there were other things.
Willa’s drawings. Every single one she’d ever left at that house. The floor plan from the snow day, with all forty-two windows counted and labeled. The GET WELL SOON picture with the yellow lights
in every window. A birthday card Willa had made when she was eleven, with a drawing of a cake shaped like a house. A little clay pineapple Willa made in sixth grade art class, to match the knocker on the blue door. I had forgotten all about that. I remembered now, Willa wrapping it in
