Alicia Atkins

I didn't want anything from them at all.

Just what they gave is a matter of course.

Yes, I got mad at them, but I didn't want them dead.

Yes, I wrote horrible things about Alicia in the past few months, but I didn't want her dead either.

It wasn't until the accident investigators had gone over the scene about a million times that the verdict came in.

I was innocent of wrongdoing.

Alicia, in the car behind, had rear-ended my vehicle on that cold, wet road.

Why she had?

No one could say for sure.

There was fog, but I didn't remember if it was bad at that moment.

There were tire marks that indicated that one or both of us had used the brakes.

No indication that she had accelerated to hit me from behind.

And no evidence to suggest either of us had wanted for it to happen.

The house was mine, free and clear.

No mortgage.

There was no runaround to see when I popped up the loose board and took out Bertrand's diary.

I couldn't stop hearing Alicia's voice enumerating the daily list of my faults, giving me a running commentary of my previous actions from the moment I passed through the door to my room to the moment I shut it in her face.

Now, all I wanted was to hear her bitching at me, just to have her there.

She could have stored my memory, like a human external hard drive for what I didn't have the personal capacity to remember.

Her voice was in my head when I sat down with my back against the wall, the way I used it all those years ago when I first found the diary and opened its cracked cover.