Chapter 4
And nobody locked his bedroom door.
On the second night, he asked whether he could leave it open.
“Of course.”
At two in the morning, I walked past his room and found him asleep with a book on his chest, the hallway light spilling across the carpet.
Maya had dragged her blanket into his room and was sleeping on the floor beside his bed.
I considered moving her.
Then I didn’t.
Instead, I sat in the hallway for a long time.
I had spent years building a house people noticed.
Stone walls.
High gates.
Cameras.
A kitchen designed by somebody whose name appeared in magazines.
And I had never understood until that moment that safety had almost nothing to do with architecture.
It was a child sleeping with a door open because he believed nobody would close it.
The blue notebook arrived the next morning.
Mom placed it on my desk.
“Read it alone.”
“Why?”
“Because Ethan wrote it for you.”
The notebook was ordinary.
Blue cardboard cover.
Bent corner.
Coffee stain near the spine.
Exactly the kind of thing my brother would have bought for three dollars instead of using an expensive leather journal.
On the first page was the sentence Mom had quoted.
Below it, in Ethan’s handwriting, were six words.
Thomas, do not become what she fears.
I stared at them for a long time.
Then I turned the page.
The first entries were about money.
Rebecca had opened credit cards.
Then personal loans.
Then borrowed from people Ethan did not know.
At first he thought she had developed a gambling problem.
She denied it.
Eventually he discovered the truth.
The money was going to someone named Claire.
Claire Hale.
Rebecca’s younger sister.
I kept reading.
Claire had been ill.
Not physically.
The entries were careful, respectful.
Ethan wrote that Claire had struggled for years with severe mental-health problems and unstable housing. Rebecca had been quietly paying for treatment, rent and debts because she believed her sister would otherwise end up on the street.
Ethan was furious she had hidden it.
Then ashamed that she felt she had to.
The next pages changed tone.
Rebecca stopped sleeping.
She started forgetting things.
She missed school pickups.
She cried in the pantry where she thought the children couldn’t hear.
Ethan convinced her to see a doctor.
She went twice.
Then stopped.
A month later, Ethan learned about his heart condition.
His handwriting became less neat.
I read faster.
He worried Rebecca’s grief, if he died, would overwhelm her.
He worried she would refuse help.
He worried she would confuse asking for help with failure.
Then I reached an entry dated eleven days before his death.
If I die suddenly, Thomas will want to solve everything by force of personality. Rebecca will interpret help as judgment. They are exactly alike in the one way neither would ever admit: both believe needing someone makes them weak.
I sat back.
The next sentence hurt worse.
The children may end up paying for two adults’ pride.
I closed the notebook.
For ten minutes, I couldn’t open it again.
When I finally did, there were only three pages left.
On the last completed page, Ethan had written:
I have asked Margaret to prepare guardianship contingencies. I have also asked Rebecca to attend counseling with me. She agreed.
Then:
If I am gone, Thomas needs to know one more thing.
The next page had been torn out.
I stared at the rough edge.
One page missing.
Someone had removed it.
Mom swore she hadn’t.
Margaret swore she had never seen the notebook after Ethan gave it to Mom.
And Rebecca was the only other person who knew it existed.
That afternoon, Detective Alvarez called.
“We finished reviewing the inventory from the hidden storage room.”
“Anything useful?”
“Yes.”
My eyes went to the notebook on my desk.
“What?”
“We found a sealed envelope taped beneath the bottom drawer of Ethan’s filing cabinet.”
“Who is it addressed to?”
She paused.
“You.”
I stood.
“What does it say?”
“We haven’t opened it.”
“Why not?”
“Because on the front your brother wrote something unusual.”
My mouth went dry.
“What?”
Alvarez read it slowly.
“Thomas—before you decide what Rebecca did, find out what I asked her to do.”
I looked down at Ethan’s notebook.
At the missing final page.
May you like
For the first time, I wondered whether the mystery was not only what Rebecca had done after Ethan died.
Maybe it was what Ethan had asked her to do before he died—and why she had failed to tell anyone.
