Lavinia bought the blue notebook because loose pieces of paper made the subject look like a shopping list. Then she made it look like a shopping list anyway.
Home. Money. Children. Faith. Work.
She stared at the page and added, underneath, How frightened am I allowed to be?
That was the one she did not show Hugo immediately.
They had been dating for nearly seven months. Since the conversation about the volunteer role, marriage had become a word they could use without laughing afterwards. He wanted it with her. She wanted it with him. Neither wanted to mistake the force of that desire for knowledge of how to live together.
On a wet November Sunday she brought the notebook to his rooms. He looked at the cover and asked whether he was about to be examined.
“Possibly. There may be supplementary questions.”
“May I ask some?”
“You’d better.”
They sat…
Keep reading.
Unlock this story and the entire library.
Or start another story free
Every story here is finished, and its first five chapters are free.
- Notes Toward a Second LanguageTwo translators, divorced, are left a dead friend's last novel on one condition: they finish it together, in one room, in six months.Completed · 18 chapters · 2h 59m
- Before We Call It LoveFor eleven years Felix has answered Nina's calls. Now he wants her to choose him before she leaves for Copenhagen.Completed · 18 chapters · 1h 51m
- The Frost LedgerA city debt-reader inherits a page that can end a border lord's endless winter, and the price only counts if nobody makes her pay it.Completed · 18 chapters · 2h 26m