Chapter 3: The Life That Accumulated

The morning after he disappeared, I went to school and sat in the same seat and looked at the empty desk where he had been, and then I took out my notebook and wrote down everything I could remember. This was not, I want to be clear, a romantic gesture. I was fifteen and empirically minded and something had happened that I could not explain, and my response to things I could not explain was to write them down very carefully and wait for the explanation to arrive. I still operate this way. My ex-husband found it maddening. My daughter finds it useful. My research committee finds it fundable.

The explanation did not arrive for twenty years. But the notes held.

I want to talk about the life in between.