Page 128 of Woman on the Verge

Ha. Dear Diary. Look at me, acting like an eleven-year-old schoolgirl. I didn’t even keep a diary when Iwas an eleven-year-old schoolgirl. It never occurred to me to keep a diary until just now, at age twenty-eight. They say necessity is the mother of invention, but I think motherhood is the necessity of invention. My thoughts have to go somewhere.

A few paragraphs in, it becomes clear that this is my mother’s journal, Rose’s journal, started in 1984, just months before she died. I start to flip through the notebook and realize it’s mostly blank. There are only five entries, the date of the last one being February 1985, right before the accident.

I read.

And read.

And read.

Rob,

I’m leaving you this diary.

So you understand that it’s not your fault. Or Nicole’s.

This life is not for me. I wish it was.

I stand from the chair, my instinct to run, go somewhere, do something. The journal falls to the floor. I have to sit again. I feel like I have vertigo, like I may pass out or throw up or both.

Merry comes into the room, saying, “Should I make a salad?”

When she sees my face, the color leaves hers.

“Nicole, what’s wrong?”

Her eyes go to the floor, to the journal.

Does she know? Has she always known?

“Oh,” she says.

And then I know that she knows, that she has always known.

She comes toward me. “Nicole, I’m so sorry. I can explain,” she says. “He saved it because he was going to tell you and—”

“Why?” It is the only word that will come.

I stand, the room still spinning around me, my legs wobbly.Noodle legs,my dad used to say after his runs. My feet don’t feel like my own, but I will them to move anyway.

I leave the room and then the house, grabbing the car keys on the console table on the way out. Merry’s voice is behind me, sounding like it’s coming from underwater: “Nicole!”

But I keep going.

I will drive to Elijah. I can’t wait for him to come to the park later. I need to see him now.

My father is dead.

My mother never was.

My father is dead.

My mother might not be.

Elijah will think I’ve lost it. But he will hold me anyway. That’s what I need. That’s what any of us need. To be held.

Chapter 23

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