Chapter 4 - The Night Before Had Been the Same
I sat on the edge of my bed with the door cracked an inch and listened to the house breathe.
Downstairs, their voices were low enough that I couldn't make out words, just the cadence. Daniel's voice stayed even. Laura's rose and fell. No one was yelling anymore. The refrigerator hummed and the clock in the hallway ticked and I tried to make myself small enough that they would forget I was up there.
That was what I'd been doing the night before, too.
The kitchen had looked the same then, only it was just me and Laura and the two of them. The light over the island was warm and yellow. She'd made chicken and rice, the good kind with the buttery smell, and she'd set out three plates on the granite. Not four. I remembered counting without meaning to.
I was standing by the stainless steel fridge with my hands in the pockets of my sweatpants. She moved around the island like she knew exactly where everything was. She spooned rice onto each plate, then chicken, then a ladle of that thin sauce she makes.
I waited. I didn't say anything at first because I was still learning how to ask without sounding like I was complaining.
"Is there one for me?" I'd asked. My voice came out quieter than I meant it to.
She didn't look up right away. She kept smoothing the rice with the back of the spoon. Then she glanced over, her blonde hair pulled back tight, her gold earrings catching the light.
"There's cereal in the pantry," she said. "You can have that. I made this for my kids."
She said it like it was reasonable. Like it was a fact. Not mean, not loud. Just flat. The kind of tone you use when you're explaining a rule.
I nodded. I remember nodding even though my throat felt tight. I went to the pantry and pulled out the box of corn flakes and poured some into a plastic bowl. The milk was cold. I ate standing up at the counter while the three of them sat at the island. Nobody told me to sit down. Nobody told me not to. I just stood there and chewed and tried to look like I wasn't hungry after the cereal was gone.
Later that night Daniel came home late. His jacket smelled like the outside and his shoes squeaked on the dark wood floor. He came into the kitchen and saw the pans on the stove already washed and put away.
He looked at me on the couch with my bowl in the sink.
"You eat already, buddy?" he asked. His voice was tired. He put his hand on my shoulder for a second. His stubble was darker in the kitchen light.
"Yeah," I said. "I'm good."
I didn't tell him. I wasn't trying to protect Laura. I just didn't want him to feel like he had to choose. I didn't want to be the reason their night got tense. So I said I was good, and he believed me, because I made my face do the right thing. I smiled a little. He nodded and went to change out of his work clothes.
Back in my bedroom now, the present came back. The floor was cold under my socks. I reached under my mattress where I'd pushed a small spiral notebook. The cover was bent. I'd started it two weeks earlier, after the third time I'd counted plates.
I opened it on my lap. My handwriting was messy, hurried.
*Monday - tacos, 3 plates. I had chips.*
*Wednesday - chicken + rice, 3 plates. cereal.*
*Friday - spaghetti, 3 plates. toast.*
I wasn't keeping it to show anyone. I just didn't want to wonder if I was making it up. When you write it down it stops feeling like you're imagining things.
Downstairs, Daniel's voice came through the floorboards a little clearer for a second. He wasn't talking to me, he was talking to Laura, but the words carried up the hallway anyway.
"I started keeping notes weeks ago," he said. His tone didn't lift. It was low and steady. "Just dates. What was made. Who was at the table."
I stared at my own notebook, at my own dates in crooked blue ink.
I hadn't shown him this. I hadn't told him at all. He'd seen it on his own, the same thing I'd been quietly counting. For a second my chest got tight, not in a bad way, but like someone had finally looked at the same page I was on.
May you like
I closed the notebook and slid it back under the mattress. The envelope was still downstairs on the granite, still sealed with that dark wax and twine. I understood then that it wasn't just an envelope. It was his version of my notebook. The grown-up copy, kept in the same quiet way.
I stayed on the bed and listened, and I didn't feel so invisible anymore.
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