On the first Saturday of April, someone knocked during the girls' afternoon nap.
I expected Ruth.
Instead, a woman named Tessa stood on the porch holding a cardboard box.
She had been Mary's closest friend since college.
They met in a statistics class and bonded over a professor who never answered questions.
Tessa had been at the funeral.
We'd barely spoken there.
"I was cleaning out the things Mary left at my place," she said. "Some of this is yours."
I stepped back.
Tessa looked around the living room.
Her eyes settled on Mary's shoes near the coat rack.
"I almost didn't come."
"You can leave the box."
"I don't want to just leave it."
We sat in the kitchen.
Tessa carefully set the box between us.
On top was a paperback with a cracked spine.
Under it lay a yellow scarf, a half-finished knitting project, and a folder of printed photographs.
I lifted a photograph of Mary at the beach.
She was standing in ankle-deep water with one hand over her eyes.
"When was this?"
"The summer before you met."
Mary looked younger than I'd ever known her.
Tessa smiled.
"She made me drive three hours because she wanted to see the sunrise. We got there at nine."
I put the photograph aside.
Tessa wasn't laughing anymore.
"I knew she was seeing someone about her anxiety," she said.
I kept my hands on the box.
"Evelyn told me."
"Mary asked me whether she should tell you."
"What did you say?"
"I told her yes."
I breathed out.
"Did she say why she wouldn't?"
"She said every time you asked whether she was all right, you looked so frightened that she wanted to make you feel better."
I remembered those conversations.
I would ask about her headache.
She would say it was fine.
I would ask whether we should call the doctor.
She would tell me not to worry.
Then I would kiss her forehead and return to whatever needed doing.
"I thought checking on her meant I was listening," I said.
"You were trying," Tessa answered.
"Not well enough."
"Daniel, she made decisions too. You were both learning something neither of you had done before."
I wanted to object.
But the babies began fussing through the monitor.
We went into the nursery together.
Tessa lifted June with the natural confidence of someone who had worked in a daycare during college.
"Hello, little person."
June blinked.
"Your mother once convinced a whole dorm that she'd adopted a hedgehog."
"She did what?"
"She kept leaving bowls of food outside her door. There was no hedgehog. She just wanted people to stop asking why her snacks disappeared."
I laughed before I meant to.
June looked startled.
That made me laugh again.
In the kitchen, Tessa opened the photograph folder.
There were pictures of Mary and me from the first year we dated.
We'd eaten noodles on the floor because we didn't own a table.
We'd stood beside a secondhand car after its engine finally started.
We'd painted our bedroom and gotten more paint on ourselves than the walls.
Tessa had printed the pictures for a birthday album.
Mary had asked her to save them because she wanted to add photographs of the twins later.
"I don't know what to do with the unfinished pages," Tessa said.
I ran my finger along the edge of the album cover.
"Don't finish it for her."
Tessa waited.
"Maybe someday the girls can choose what to put there."
She nodded.
At the bottom of the box was a notebook.
Mary had written recipes on its first pages.
Then grocery lists.
Then notes to herself.
One entry said to buy more batteries for the baby monitor.
Another reminded her to ask a doctor about a persistent headache.
I stared at those words for a long time.
Tessa reached out.
"You don't have to read all of that today."
"I know."
But I kept looking.
It was tempting to turn every ordinary scrap into evidence.
The notebook might tell me when she started worrying.
It might show whether someone missed an opportunity.
It might let me reconstruct her last months minute by minute.
What it could not do was let Mary answer me now.
I closed it.
"Would you come over again?" I asked.
Tessa looked surprised.
"Of course."
"The girls should know you."
"I'd like that."
After she left, I tucked the notebook onto a high shelf.
I set the unfinished album on the dining table.
That evening I added the first new photograph.
June and Alice asleep side by side on a blanket.
I wrote the date underneath.
Then I stopped.
I wanted to write something that would make the picture worthy of Mary.
Instead I wrote what had actually happened.
They slept for forty minutes at the same time.
We were all grateful.
Mary would have understood.
Three days after Tessa's visit, I found the blue notebook on the kitchen table.
I'd left it there after looking through the photographs.
The next entry was a shopping list from the week we learned we were expecting twins.
Diapers, two sizes.
Spare pillow.
Ginger tea.
A note in the margin said, Ask Dan if he thinks the car is big enough.
I smiled.
We had argued about that car for weeks.
Mary thought we needed something with more trunk space.
I said we could make it work.
We stood outside one afternoon trying to fit a double stroller into the trunk.
A neighbor watched from across the fence.
The stroller didn't fit.
Mary didn't say I told you so.
She waited until I had pushed it in three different directions.
Then she offered me a cold drink.
"We'll look at used cars," she said.
I remembered being annoyed.
I wanted her to be impressed by my determination.
She wanted the stroller to fit without a wrestling match.
We looked at cars the following weekend.
We bought one after comparing prices, insurance, and repair records.
That was what our marriage had been like much of the time.
Ordinary negotiations.
Sometimes patient.
Sometimes petty.
Usually resolved when one of us remembered we were on the same side.
I told Tessa about the notebook when she called.
"Do you mind if I ask you something?" she said.
"Go ahead."
"Have you been reading every page looking for warning signs?"
I looked at the open notebook.
"Some of them."
"Mary wasn't keeping a medical diary. Some days she was just deciding what to buy for dinner."
"I know."
"I think she'd hate the idea that every sentence she wrote had become evidence in a case against herself."
I looked again at the car note.
It wasn't ominous.
It was practical.
A woman preparing for two babies wanted a larger trunk.
I closed the notebook.
That evening I wrote my own entry in a blank notebook.
June tried to eat the corner of a blanket.
Alice cried because I stopped her from pulling my glasses off.
We bought bananas and soap.
Nothing terrible happened.
Writing that last sentence felt strange.
Then I decided the girls deserved records of ordinary days too.
Click here to continue reading: PART 6: Evelyn Asked Me to Visit Mary’s Childhood Home and Showed Me the Room She Had Kept Closed
The Morning Mary Laughed About Baby Names and the Night I Came Home Without Her
Part 5 of 16
