Chapter 175 Sharing The Notebook

Chapter 175 Sharing The Notebook
Zael arrived at eleven-fifteen.

Through the lobby… I watched from the office window as he came through the entrance, past the portrait, the particular walk of a man who was moving with purpose because I had sent a message that suggested something mattered.

He came upstairs without stopping at Priya’s desk.

She waved him through.

He came into my office and looked at the notebook open on the desk and looked at my face and read both correctly.

“Sit down,” I said.

He sat in the chair across the desk.

I picked up the notebook.

“I’m going to read you something, the last section. I’ll start before the dream entry so you have context.”

He nodded.

No questions. No preamble. Just… ready.

I began three pages before the final entry.

His eyes closed about thirty seconds in.

Not from tiredness. I had seen him close his eyes when he was listening to something he wanted to receive without distraction. The way he listened to music occasionally. The way he had listened when Odette read the memoir chapter about the wedding.

Eyes closed. Posture open. Full attention with nothing between him and the words.

I read the observations about the company. The note about Priya and her mother. The four lines about Margaux that were careful and tender. The questions about the uncomfortable partnership that would eventually become something larger and more dangerous than any uncomfortable feeling.

Then the final pages.

The writing that was different… slightly more pressured, the pen moving with the quality of someone putting things down because they needed to be put down before the opportunity passed.

I read slowly.

Not performing. Just reading.

When I reached the dream entry I paused for one second… not for effect, because the transition mattered, and then read it.

Had a dream last night about Seraphine. She was older… I couldn’t have told you by how much. Standing in the lobby of this building. Looking like she belonged there completely. Not visiting. Not performing belonging. Actually there, in the way you’re actually somewhere when it’s yours.

Across the desk Zael’s jaw tightened slightly.

Not pain. The expression of someone receiving something that has weight.

I continued.

She was smiling.

Not at me. At someone off to the left. I couldn’t see who. The dream didn’t show me that part.

I woke up thinking… good. That’s good. I don’t need to see who. I just need to know she’s smiling like that.

I think she will be.

I lowered the notebook.

Zael’s eyes were still closed.

Neither of us spoke for a moment.

Then he said: “That’s not the last entry.”

I looked at the notebook.

“No,” I said. “There are two more pages.”

“Read them,” he said.

I turned the page.

The second-to-last entry was dated four days before he died.

Shorter than the dream entry. Six lines.

Have been thinking about what I want for her that I can’t give her. The company… I can give that. The evidence… I can give that. The ring… I’ve given that to Odette. The documentation, the locket, the safety deposit box, all of it done.

What I can’t give her is time. Years of ordinary Saturdays. Arguments about nothing important. The texture of being known by someone who has been paying attention for long enough to notice the things you don’t announce.

That’s the part I can’t package and leave with a solicitor.

I hope someone gives her that. In the end.

I stopped.

The office was very quiet.

“Go on,” Zael said. His voice was different… the unarmored version.

“There’s one more entry,” I said. “The last one.”

“Read it.”

I turned to the final page.

The last entry was dated two days before he died.

The handwriting was careful.. more careful than the previous entries, the deliberateness of someone who understood this might be the last time they wrote in this notebook and wanted to get it right.

Two days, he had written. Maybe less. I don’t know the exact timing. Just that it’s close.

I’ve been thinking about love.

Not romantically, practically. What it actually is when you strip away the language people use to describe it. I think it’s this: paying attention to someone for long enough that you understand what they need before they name it. And then choosing to provide it not because it serves you but because it serves them.

That’s the whole thing. Everything else is decoration.

I don’t know who she’ll find. I hope she finds someone who pays that kind of attention. Someone who notices when the coffee goes cold and understands what that means. Someone who can sit in a room with her without needing her to perform anything.

I hope she finds someone who knows how to stay.

She deserves someone who stays.

I stopped reading.

The notebook was open on my lap.

The office was the kind of quiet that arrived when something significant had been said and the room needed a moment before anyone spoke into it.

Zael opened his eyes.

He looked at me across the desk.

His face was the completely open one… no management of it, nothing between what he felt and what showed.

“Someone who notices when the coffee goes cold,” he said quietly.

I looked at him.

“You left coffee on my desk,” I said. “Day two.”

“You hadn’t eaten lunch,” he replied.

“You noticed.”

“Yes.”

“He described that, two days before he died. He described exactly that.” I looked at the notebook. “He didn’t know who. He didn’t know your name or your face or anything about you.” I looked at Zael. “But he described you.”

Zael was looking at the notebook.

Not at me. At the notebook.

At the last words David Callum wrote in any notebook, not about evidence or Gerald or the case or the company.

About love.

About what he wanted for his daughter.

About someone who stays.

“Zael,” I said.

He looked up.

“He didn’t know who you were… but he knew you existed.” I looked at the notebook. “He went to his death trusting that you existed somewhere.” Another pause. “That’s what got him through the last two days.” 

I looked at Zael. “Not the evidence. Not the locket. The belief that someone like you was out there and that she would find him.”

Zael looked at the window.

The same window. The same view my father had chosen.

“He was right,” he nodded. Very quietly.

“Yes,” I smiled. “He was.”