Day 12 - Her Handwriting

Elliot woke on Megan’s side of the bed.

For several seconds, he did not understand why the room looked wrong.

Then he remembered.

Not her death.

That came later.

First he remembered choosing the side.

That distinction mattered.

He lay still and looked at the ceiling.

Nothing had changed overnight.

The house was the same.

Megan was still gone.

The manuscript still existed.

The man in The Sleeper had still reached across an empty bed and found nothing.

But Elliot had slept.

Actually slept.

Not well.

Not peacefully.

Just enough.

He sat up.

On Megan’s nightstand, the three books remained where they had been for months.

He picked up the one with the receipt marking her place.

The receipt was from a grocery store.

Bananas.

Milk.

Coffee.

Dish soap.

A bottle of wine.

At the bottom, in Megan’s handwriting:

terrible ending

Elliot stared at it.

He turned the receipt over.

Nothing else.

He looked at the book.

Then back at the receipt.

“You used a grocery receipt to review a novel.”

Of course she had.

He laughed.

A small sound.

But real.

He got dressed.

Took the receipt downstairs with him.

Work was mercifully ordinary.

For most of the morning, Elliot thought about concrete instead of mortality.

At eleven, Marcus dropped a folder on his desk.

“You look less haunted.”

Elliot looked up.

“That feels inappropriate.”

“Probably.”

Marcus sat.

“You sleeping?”

“Some.”

“That’s an improvement.”

Elliot nodded.

Marcus waited.

Elliot knew the question underneath the question.

He did not answer it.

Instead he held up the grocery receipt.

“Megan apparently used receipts for literary criticism.”

Marcus took it.

Read the note.

“Terrible ending.”

“Apparently.”

“What book?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“You’re going to check.”

“Yes.”

Marcus handed it back.

“You know this is exactly how people end up cataloging dead relatives’ handwriting.”

Elliot looked at him.

Marcus paused.

Then said, “That sounded better before I said it.”

“It did not.”

“Fair.”

Elliot put the receipt in his pocket.

He did not throw it away.

That evening, he went upstairs without turning on the hallway light.

The desk lamp was enough now.

That had become a habit in less than a week.

He sat in Megan’s chair.

Then looked around the room.

He had spent days treating every page as potentially meaningful.

Maybe that was the problem.

The room was full of things Megan had never intended to mean anything.

Sticky notes.

Receipts.

Half-used notebooks.

Draft scraps.

To-do lists.

He opened the shallow desk drawer and pulled out a handful of paper.

The first sticky note said:

CALL TAMMY

Below it:

seriously, call Tammy

And beneath that:

you are a bad sister

Elliot smiled.

The next:

buy coffee
laundry detergent
email Lisa
figure out chapter 8
why is Elliot like this

He frowned.

“Like what?”

Megan had not provided context.

Typical.

He set it aside.

Another:

Remember dentist Thursday.
Elliot also has dentist Thursday because apparently we are eighty.

He laughed.

This time harder.

Enough that he had to lean back.

The sound felt wrong in the room for half a second.

Then less wrong.

He kept going.

A printed page from one of her published novels had a sentence crossed out and replaced with:

absolutely not

Another had:

Lisa will hate this.

Under that:

Lisa may be right. unfortunate.

Another:

Too many adverbs. Jesus.

And then, on the next page:

keep this adverb out of spite

Elliot put his hand over his mouth.

He could hear her.

Not in the mystical way grief occasionally tried to offer when people said someone was “still with you.”

He did not know what he believed about that.

This was simpler.

Megan’s sense of humor had survived because she had physically put it on paper.

Her irritation.

Her indecision.

Her bad jokes.

Her arguments with herself.

The ordinary machinery of her mind.

He found a legal pad beneath a stack of printouts.

The top page contained what appeared to be notes for dinner.

pasta?

Then:

no

Then:

why did I write pasta if I don’t want pasta

Then:

ask Elliot

Then, underneath:

Elliot will say “what’s the plan?” and make dinner emotionally administrative

Elliot laughed so suddenly he startled himself.

He put the pad down.

“That is unfair.”

The room offered no defense.

“It is.”

He read it again.

Then laughed harder.

For a moment, the loss and the manuscript and the cancer and everything enormous receded.

There was only Megan being annoyed with him from several years ago because he apparently had the ability to overmanage dinner.

He wiped beneath one eye.

Not crying.

Mostly.

He sat there until the laughter faded naturally.

Then something else came in behind it.

Guilt.

Fast.

Automatic.

It surprised him.

He had laughed.

Really laughed.

For maybe fifteen seconds.

And some part of him had immediately turned toward Megan as if to apologize.

He knew this reaction was irrational.

He also knew irrationality was not particularly interested in being corrected.

He looked down at the legal pad.

Megan would have hated that.

Not his laughing.

The guilt afterward.

She had been ruthless about unnecessary guilt.

Once, years ago, Elliot had apologized three times for missing one of her bookstore events because a project had gone sideways.

On the third apology, Megan had said:

“If you apologize again, I’m going to assume you did something much worse and confessing is taking you a while.”

He stopped apologizing.

Mostly.

He leaned back in the chair.

The room did not feel empty tonight.

Again, he corrected himself.

It was empty.

Megan was not there.

But empty and meaningless were not the same thing.

He was beginning to understand that.

He picked up another stack.

Old drafts.

Some train.

Some not.

A page from The Smoking Car had a note written diagonally across the top.

Elliot will hate this sentence.

He froze.

That was the note he had seen earlier in the week.

He had forgotten about it.

Now he read the sentence below.

He folded the map so carefully that she briefly considered setting it on fire just to see what expression he would make.

Elliot stared.

Then laughed again.

“Okay.”

He reached for a pencil.

Under Megan’s note—

Elliot will hate this sentence.

—he wrote:

Correct.

He considered it.

Then added:

Keep it.

He sat back.

Two different handwritings.

Two different moments.

Maybe ten years apart.

Her joke.

His answer.

Something tightened in his chest, but it wasn’t only grief.

There was pleasure in it too.

That felt almost more dangerous.

He let it stay.

He spent another hour going through scraps.

Not searching.

That was important.

He was not looking for clues.

He was simply reading what Megan had left because he liked reading her.

A note about a character’s shoes.

A terrible metaphor crossed out.

A page containing only possible names.

A list of books she wanted to buy.

A reminder to send Tammy a birthday card.

A line he liked:

Sometimes people mistake being witnessed for being understood.

No context.

No idea whether it belonged anywhere.

He copied it onto his legal pad.

Then stopped.

He was doing it again.

Turning Megan into categories.

Quotes.

Evidence.

He put the pencil down.

At ten fifteen, he carried the grocery receipt back upstairs to the bedroom.

He found the book it had come from.

Read the final page.

Then sat there for a second.

Megan had been right.

The ending was terrible.

“Okay,” he said.

He placed the receipt back where he found it.

Not because the placement was sacred.

Because it was funny there.

That felt like a better reason.

Before bed, he returned to the office.

The page from The Smoking Car was still on the desk.

Megan’s handwriting:

Elliot will hate this sentence.

His beneath it:

Correct.
Keep it.

He looked at the exchange.

Then switched off the lamp.

For once, he did not leave it on.

He did not need to.