Chapter 3: Every Word in Pencil
The notebook was small enough to fit in a child's schoolbag.
The cover was a faded yellow.
The corners were bent from being opened and closed too many times.
A piece of tape held the spine together where it had started to split.
I opened it.
Isabella's handwriting filled the first page.
Large, careful letters.
The kind a child writes when she is trying very hard to be neat.
*Day 1 without Dad.
Beatriz said I have to earn my meals now.
I didn't know what that meant.
She showed me.*
I turned the page.
*Day 4.
My hands hurt from the scrubbing brush.
I asked if I could wear gloves.
She said gloves are for people who complain.*
"Put that down." Beatriz's voice was quiet.
Precise.
"That is a child's private journal.
Reading it without her permission is a violation."
I looked up from the notebook.
"A violation."
"Yes."
"Tell me, Beatriz." I set the notebook flat on the table and kept my hand on it.
"Which page covers the day you made her scrub the kitchen floor with a toothbrush?
Because I'd like to know if she wrote that down too."
Her jaw tightened.
"I never—"
"Elena." I didn't look away from Beatriz.
"Did Isabella scrub the kitchen floor with a toothbrush?"
Elena's hands were clasped in front of her.
"Yes, sir.
Twice."
Beatriz turned toward her.
"You are an employee in this house.
You do not speak unless—"
"She speaks when I ask her a question." I closed the notebook.
"Sit down, Beatriz."
"I'm already sitting."
"Then stop talking until I finish reading."
The silence that followed was different from any silence I had experienced in three months of international business.
In Dubai, silence meant calculation.
Here, it meant something had broken that could not be repaired quietly.
I read for eleven minutes.
Isabella had written an entry for every single day.
Some were three lines.
Some filled both sides of the page.
The handwriting changed as the weeks passed — less careful, more hurried, the letters smaller, as if she had learned to take up less space on the page the same way she had learned to take up less space in the house.
*Day 19.
I dropped a plate.
It was an accident.
She made me stand in the corner of the garden for two hours.
It was raining.
I didn't tell her my shoes got wet because last time I said something she gave me extra work.*
*Day 31.
I tried to call Dad.
She took my tablet.
She said I could have it back when I learned to be grateful.*
My tablet.
The one I had loaded with Isabella's favourite films before I left.
The one I had kissed her forehead over and said, *This is so you don't miss me too much.*
I set the notebook down.
Beatriz was watching me with an expression I recognized from difficult negotiations.
She was waiting to see which version of me she was dealing with.
The businessman who calculated.
Or someone else.
"Where is the tablet?" I asked.
"In storage.
She was using it to avoid her responsibilities."
"Her responsibilities." I repeated the words slowly.
"She is eight years old.
Her responsibility is to go to school, eat her meals, and sleep in a safe bed.
That is the complete list."
"You've always been too soft with her." Beatriz leaned forward.
"Her mother raised her to be helpless.
Someone had to correct that."
The room went very still.
Elena looked at the floor.
Isabella, sitting beside me, went rigid.
I had not spoken about Isabella's mother — my first wife, Camila, who had d*ed when Isabella was three — in this house.
Not once.
Beatriz knew that.
She had always known that.
"Say that again," I said.
Beatriz held my gaze.
"I said her mother raised her to be helpless.
It's the truth.
You know it's the truth.
You just don't want to hear it."
I stood up from the table.
"Isabella." My voice stayed level.
"Go upstairs with Elena.
I'll come up in a little while."
Isabella looked at me.
Then at Beatriz.
"It's all right," I said.
"Go."
Elena took Isabella's hand.
They left the kitchen together.
I heard their footsteps on the stairs, slow and careful, the way people move when they don't want to be heard.
Beatriz waited until the footsteps faded.
Then she said, "You're going to overreact.
You always overreact when it comes to her."
I picked up the notebook.
"I'm going to make one phone call," I said.
"While I do that, I'd like you to think carefully about whether there is anything else in this house that I should know about."
"What kind of phone call?"
I was already walking toward the door.
"The kind," I said, "that I should have made three months ago before I left my daughter alone with you."
Behind me, I heard the cocktail glass move across the counter.
Then I heard Beatriz say, very quietly, to no one in particular:
"She showed you that notebook on purpose."
I stopped walking.
I didn't turn around.
"Yes," I said.
"She did."
I walked out.
And as I reached the hallway and pulled out my phone, I realized something that changed the shape of everything I thought I understood.
Elena had known where that notebook was.
May you like
Elena had kept it safe.
Which meant Elena had been waiting — for exactly this moment — for three months.
