Part 4
The notebook was not a diary.
At least, not at first.
The first pages were lists.
Dates.
Names.
Notes written in Margaret’s neat handwriting.
October 14 — Tyler’s truck outside pharmacy again.
October 16 — Bought him coffee. He refused at first.
October 20 — Saw him help older man carry groceries to car.
October 24 — Heard him arguing with collector on phone. He sounded frightened, not cruel.
October 29 — Asked Harlan to look into his situation.
I stared at the page.
I remembered October 16.
I had been sitting in the parking lot outside the pharmacy with my hands wrapped around the steering wheel.
Margaret had come out carrying a small paper bag.
She walked toward my truck and knocked on the window.
I had rolled it down just enough to ask what she wanted.
She held out a coffee.
“You look cold,” she said.
I had told her I did not need charity.
She smiled.
“It is not charity,” she said. “I bought too much.”
I took the coffee.
Then she walked away.
That had been our first conversation.
I had forgotten it.
She had not.
The notes continued for weeks.
She wrote about seeing me at the grocery store.
Seeing me in the library using a computer.
Seeing me buy generic cough medicine and put back a bottle of vitamins because I could not afford both.
Then I found the page that changed everything.
November 3 — Tyler offered his last twenty dollars to the woman with the baby outside the gas station. He did not know I was watching.
My chest tightened.
I remembered that woman.
It had been raining.
She had a baby in a car seat and a cardboard sign.
I had been angry at myself for giving her money because I barely had enough for gas.
But I had done it anyway.
I had not thought anyone saw.
Margaret wrote:
He is not a good man yet.
But I do not think he is a bad one either.
I think he has been afraid for too long.
I closed the notebook.
For years, I had believed Margaret saw me as her way out of loneliness.
Then I believed she saw me as a project.
Now I realized something worse.
She had seen the version of me I had refused to see.
She had seen the small decent things I did when no one was watching.
She had believed they mattered.
The next day at Mercy Harbor, Carla found me fixing a kitchen cabinet in Unit 12.
“You are quiet today,” she said.
“I found something my wife left me.”
“Good something or bad something?”
“Both.”
She leaned against the doorway.
“That usually means it is true.”
I laughed a little.
Then I showed her the notebook.
Carla read a few pages.
When she finished, she handed it back.
“She sounds like a smart woman.”
“She was.”
“She sounds like she knew you were a mess.”
“She did.”
“And she still gave you a chance.”
I nodded.
Carla looked toward the hallway.
“You know, people here are going to test you.”
“I already noticed.”
“They will lie to you. They will take what you offer. They will blame you for rules they do not like. Some of them will leave, relapse, disappear, come back angry, and do the same thing again.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.”
“Why do you stay?”
Carla looked at me.
“Because people are more than the worst thing they did in survival mode.”
I did not answer.
I did not have to.
That afternoon, a man named Andre came into the workshop.
He was the same man who had cursed at me over the heater filter.
He was older than I first thought.
Maybe fifty-five.
His hands shook when he held a screwdriver.
“I heard you used to do car work,” he said.
“Some.”
“My van will not start.”
“Where is it?”
“Out back.”
I followed him outside.
The van was old.
Rust along the bottom.
Duct tape over one of the windows.
The engine would not turn over.
Andre stood beside me with his arms folded.
“You gonna tell me it needs a thousand dollars?”
“No.”
“You gonna tell me I should have taken better care of it?”
“No.”
He looked suspicious.
Then I opened the hood.
The battery cables were corroded.
The terminals were loose.
I cleaned them, tightened them, and asked him to turn the key.
The engine coughed.
Then started.
Andre stared at me.
“That is it?”
“That was it.”
He stood there for a moment.
Then he reached into his pocket.
“I got six dollars.”
I shook my head.
“Keep it.”
He looked almost offended.
“Nothing is free.”
I thought about Margaret’s coffee.
The boots.
The coat.
The apartment.
“No,” I said quietly. “Sometimes it is.”
Andre got into the van.
Before he drove away, he rolled down the window.
“You are weird,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I have been told.”
That night, there was a knock at my apartment door.
When I opened it, Graham was standing in the hallway.
He looked tired.
His expensive coat was unbuttoned.
His hair was damp from the rain.
“What do you want?” I asked.
He looked past me into the apartment.
“I need to talk about Margaret’s house.”
I folded my arms.
“You inherited it.”
“I know.”
“Then what is there to talk about?”
May you like
His jaw tightened.
“There is a problem.”
