“I know.”
“I would never have said what I said if I knew.”
I looked around my newly rekeyed office.
“That was the problem, Evelyn.
You didn’t know, and you still decided I was guilty.”
She cried.
I did not comfort her.
I was no longer volunteering for that job.
Months later, after the divorce papers were nearly finished, my attorney returned a copy of the black notebook to me with the rest of my records.
I sat at my desk and opened it.
For the first time, I read every page.
The woman described inside was selfish, unstable, cold, dramatic, suspicious, ungrateful, difficult.
I recognized every date.
But I no longer recognized Grant’s explanations.
March 14 was the day I believed his cruelty about me.
April 2 was the day my suspicion was correct.
May 19 was the day I survived a loss almost entirely alone.
June 7 was the day I finally said somewhere safe that I did not feel safe at home.
And the day I met the divorce attorney was not evidence that I had betrayed my marriage.
It was evidence that I had finally begun protecting myself.
I closed the black book and placed it inside a storage box with the legal files.
I did not burn it.
I did not tear out the pages.
Grant had spent months trying to turn my private history into a verdict against me.
In the end, the same book became proof of something much simpler.
I had not imagined what was happening.
I had simply stopped explaining it to people committed to misunderstanding me.
Then I locked the office door with a key only I possessed and went downstairs to eat dinner in peace.
