Chapter 3 - Isabella Had Been Afraid Before She Died
The next several pages were not emotional confessions. They were notes. Dates. Fragments of conversations. Times. Places. Small observations written in the clipped, careful style of someone who believed details might one day matter more than feelings.
The first relevant entry was dated six weeks before Isabella’s death.
Edmund came again after Salvatore left for Boston. Said the library cabinet contains things that belong to the family, not to me. Marina heard everything. Pretended not to.
Another:
Marina knows when Edmund arrives even if no one tells her. She avoids my eyes afterward.
Another, written only eleven days before the accident:
If anything happens to me, he will go looking for the blue book first.
He.
Not they.
He.
Edmund.
Olivia, who had gone quiet beside me, whispered, “Mommy cried in here.”
I looked down.
“When?”
“The night she hugged me a long time.”
That had been the last night I saw Isabella alive before leaving for a short business trip.
I had remembered the hug.
I had not remembered her fear.
Or maybe I had seen it and named it stress because that was easier.
Now the notebook was telling me my wife had been documenting something in this house before she died.
Something she believed might outlive her.
And the first man to slap my child for it was Edmund.
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The second person to help him search for it was Marina.
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