Prologue

The Habit

Prologue

This is the last page. The notebook is full. I counted the entries today — not because I wanted to, but because my hand kept going back to the first one, and by the time I stopped I had read them all in order. I don't know how to say what I found there. It wasn't in any one entry by itself. It was only in the way the lines began, one after another, until my own handwriting said what I have been refusing to say for twenty-nine years, and when I read it I sat on the porch step and I could not get up for a long time.

I thought I fixed the faucet. It turns out I only fixed the noise.

I think that's all right.