I married a stranger I met in a hospital waiting room so he wouldn’t die alone—after just one week of marriage, his lawyer handed me his backpack.

Most of the time, it’s the absence of being noticed.”

The notebook still waited at the bottom.

The words felt strangely familiar, though I couldn’t remember Thomas ever saying them aloud.

I turned the page.

There wasn’t a diary waiting for me.

There weren’t confessions or childhood memories.

There wasn’t even a timeline.

Instead, every page described a single continue reading …